Grades from Kansas State’s victory over Nevada and a look ahead to Oklahoma State
The Kansas State football team turned a close game into a blowout and pulled away from Nevada for a 38-17 victory on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium
It was an impressive win considering the Wildcats were home underdogs without injured starting quarterback Skylar Thompson in command of the offense.
With the victory, K-State (3-0) closed out the nonconference portion of its schedule with an undefeated record for the second time under Chris Klieman. It will now try to surprise some folks in Big 12 play.
Here are grades from the victory and a look ahead to K-State’s next game against Oklahoma State.
PLAYER OF THE GAME
Let’s go outside the box this week and hand out five game balls to Kansas State’s starting offensive line of Cooper Beebe, Josh Rivas, Noah Johnson, Ben Adler and Christian Duffie. The Wildcats found a way to rush for 269 yards without much of a passing attack, as Will Howard and Jaren Lewis only attempted a combined 13 passes. K-State ran the ball 48 times, and Nevada had no answer for Deuce Vaughn (127 yards and a touchdown) or Joe Ervin (82 yards and a touchdown). That doesn’t happen without stellar blocking.
PLAY OF THE GAME
K-State only had one explosive passing play against Nevada, but it was a big one. On the second play of the day, Howard connected with tight end Daniel Imatorbhebhe for a 68-yard touchdown. It looked easy. Imatorbhebhe got behind the defense with a post route and then beat everyone to the end zone. Turns out, Howard made the play happen when he saw a defensive look he liked at the line of scrimmage and checked into it. Imatorbhebhe was originally supposed to run a shorter route to the side of the field.
STAT OF THE GAME
K-State limited Nevada to 25 rushing yards on 23 attempts. That’s an average of 1.1 yards per run. The Wildcats made the Wolf Pack one dimensional on offense, which put extra pressure on quarterback Carson Strong to try and win the game with his arm.
QUOTE TO NOTE
“This the most fun I have had playing football in a long time and I think overall our team played a heck of a game from start to finish. I couldn’t be more proud of how we stuck it out.” — Will Howard.
GRADES
Offense: B. The Wildcats only got one big play in the passing game, but they did whatever they wanted in the running game and finished with 398 total yards and 38 points. It wasn’t pretty, by any means, but Courtney Messingham’s group did more than enough things right to win without Thompson.
Defense: A. Give Strong credit. He made some NFL throws in this game. But K-State’s defense made him look mortal by disguising its defensive looks and forcing him to attempt short passes much more often than he looked down field. Daniel Green (nine tackles) continues to be a force at linebacker. Nate Matlack came through with some important stops in the fourth quarter.
Special Teams: D. This has not been a vintage season for K-State special teams. Ty Zentner had an ugly 16-yard punt in the third quarter and the Wolf Pack appeared to return a kickoff for a touchdown in this game before it was negated by penalty.
Coaching: A. Winning without your starting quarterback is never easy. Give credit to Klieman and his staff for finding a way to do that against Nevada.
NEXT UP
K-State will begin Big 12 play on the road next week against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Boone Pickens Stadium (6 p.m. Saturday on ESPN+).
It promises to be an intriguing matchup.
The Cowboys are also off to a 3-0 start and logged their most impressive victory of the season on Saturday when they went on the road to beat Boise State 21-20 on the Broncos’ famous blue turf.
This is a different type of Oklahoma State team than we normally see from Mike Gundy. The Cowboys aren’t lighting up the stat sheet on offense. Even with Spencer Sanders back at quarterback, they are only averaging 336.7 yards per game. They haven’t scored more than 28 points in any of their three games.
They are winning with defense.
Oklahoma State has been at its best against the run, allowing an eye-popping 2.6 yards per carry.
Can K-State find a way to run against that defensive front?
It will be a challenge. Thompson is not expected to play again this week, which means the Wildcats will once again rely heavily on their ground game against the Cowboys.
The winner of this Big 12 opener could come down to which team makes the fewest mistakes.
This story was originally published September 19, 2021 at 11:26 AM.