Chris Klieman has historic plans for K-State running back Deuce Vaughn this season
Coming off a season in which Deuce Vaughn eclipsed 1,000 yards from scrimmage and made defenders all across the Big 12 look silly, it makes sense that Kansas State football coach Chris Klieman wants to find more ways to feature the Wildcats’ electric running back now that he is a sophomore.
Giving the ball to your best offensive weapon is good strategy, after all.
Still, it raised eyebrows when Klieman suggested Vaughn could see as many as 25 touches per game this year.
Why? Well, Klieman has never before coached a running back who was that involved on offense. Only one of his former players has even come close. And Vaughn doesn’t look like a stereotypical workhorse runner. At 5-foot-6 and 172 pounds, he is one of the shortest players in college football. Derrick Henry he is not.
That didn’t stop Vaughn from averaging 14.8 touches last season while he piled up 642 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground to go with 434 yards and two touchdowns through the air. But can he handle nearly double that workload?
“I’m ready to go,” Vaughn said this week. “As many touches as they give me, every time I touch the ball, I’m ready to go. If that’s 25, if that’s 10, I’m ready to go and play. I know that I’m not a big guy. I’ve been able to shy away from some big hits and contort my body so I’m not taking huge hits and it has really helped me throughout my career.”
Despite Vaughn’s confidence, it may take K-State coaches will need to take durability into account as they balance Vaughn’s explosive skills with his undersized build.
A good problem to have
Offensive coordinator Courtney Messingham views that as a good problem to have.
Most probably assume that Vaughn will touch the ball predominantly out of the backfield on traditional hand-offs and pitches, but Messingham wants to use him in more of a swiss-army-knife role. He envisions Vaughn lining up as a receiver and burning linebackers deep for easy catches just as often as he sees him bursting through a hole at the line of scrimmage for a long run.
There’s a chance Vaughn will even be used as a decoy.
“We have to use him, even if it’s not always handing it to him, or not always throwing it to him,” Messingham said. “Everybody knows that he has the skill set to pretty much do everything. So, if we motion him out to an outside receiver, they have to use a good player to cover him. They can’t just say, ‘Oh, take your (linebacker) out there and cover it,’ because that’s a great matchup for us if they do that. So, even if we’re not handing it to him or throwing it to him, he can still be a guy they have to defend, and that helps us.”
In other words, 25 touches for Vaughn could look much different than 25 touches for an old school runner.
Vaughn admitted earlier this week that he is lining up all over the field in practice as part of formations that feature as many as three running backs. He seemed particularly excited about moving to receiver when Joe Ervin is also in the game.
“It’s kind of like pick your poison,” Vaughn said.
This season, Vaughn expects to play running back, wide receiver and even some fullback when coaches ask him to block for Ervin or Jacardia Wright.
It’s safe to say he is ready for anything.
He did a little bit of everything in high school, too, when he was growing up in Round Rock, Texas.
“There were games I would have 40 touches,” Vaughn said. “I would have something like 30 carries and six catches. I remember those big games. They were maybe three out of an 11-game season, but I was above 25 touches every game.”
His body took some punishment on Fridays, but he learned how to recover in time for the next game by taking ice baths and spending extra time in the training room.
Perhaps that is why the Wildcats are eager to get him the ball in so many different ways.
“We all know Deuce is a really, really special player,” K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson said. “I think that he’s just gotten better this offseason and has really perfected his craft and little aspects that having a year under his belt and some experience has benefited him. In that aspect, we’ve got to find ways to give him the ball, whatever that may look like. We have to get him touches and get into space and let him be Deuce.”
Klieman historically prefers multiple running backs
Klieman can talk all he wants about making Vaughn the focal point of K-State’s offense this season, but that has never really been his style. During his previous seven seasons as a head coach, including five at North Dakota State, he has seemed to favor a committee of running backs much more than a lone ranger.
It’s more common for Klieman’s teams to split carries between four ball-carriers than one.
In fact, he’s never coached a running back who has averaged 25 touches per game.
Now that Ervin, Wright and D.J. Giddens have emerged as solid backup options, it seems unlikely that they will stand on the sideline and watch as Vaughn handles 300 carries.
Even last season, when the Wildcats lacked quality options outside of Vaughn they found a way to share the work load. Vaughn led the way with 123 carries, while Harry Trotter and Will Howard both rushed the ball more than 70 times.
It was a combination of James Gilbert, Jordon Brown and Trotter in 2019, with no one seeing more than 141 carries.
Things weren’t any different at North Dakota State. Lance Dunn led all running backs with 160 carries in 2018, Bruce Anderson with 234 in 2017 and King Frazier with 183 and 219 the two years before that. Keep in mind, those numbers are inflated a bit, because the Bison routinely played 15 games on their way to FCS championships.
In one of those seasons, Klieman found a way to get three different players 100 carries.
No running back has averaged more than 15.6 touches per game while playing for Klieman over the past six years.
“It’s just been something where we want to make sure that we have enough guys engaged that can make plays,” Klieman said, “because you know it’s hard to play running back in any level of football and be a guy that’s taking the punishment for 25 or 30 reps a game. So, we need to make sure that we’re able to spread that around.”
All he can handle
There is one exception.
John Crockett averaged a whopping 24.8 touches for North Dakota State in 2014, Klieman’s first year as a head coach. Crockett was a 6-foot and 215-pound senior at the time, and he was the engine that made that offense go. He ran the ball 368 times for 1,994 yards and 21 touchdowns. He also caught 30 passes for 397 yards and a touchdown. Heck, he even threw for a touchdown.
That is a high benchmark for Vaughn to clear, especially as a sophomore. But it’s not out of the question, because Klieman has never coached a versatile player like Vaughn before.
K-State will give him all the work he can handle.