How Ben Sinnott became a star tight end at Kansas State after starting out as walk-on
Earlier this season, Kansas State football coach Chris Klieman was asked to explain why it seemed like every skill player on the offensive side of the ball was suddenly catching so many passes and scoring so many touchdowns.
His answer surprisingly had nothing to do with Will Howard emerging as one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12 or the Wildcats’ trio of starting receivers playing the best games of their college careers.
Instead, he gave credit to a former walk-on tight end from Waterloo, Iowa who entered the season as a virtual unknown.
“The rise of Ben Sinnott has helped everybody,” Klieman said. “I think you guys all see how dynamic Ben can be. He’s as fast as a lot of wide receivers. I mean, he really runs down the field and he has a big body that can wall people off. He can catch the ball and he does things after a catch that make a difference. He used to be the forgotten guy back there. Now he’s drawing a ton of attention. He can stretch the field for our running back, who is one of the best in all of college football, and he has opened things up for our receivers.”
There you have it.
It has become popular for quarterbacks to buy gifts for their offensive line around Christmas time as a way to say thank you for protecting them throughout the season as they stood confidently in the pocket and distributed the ball. Perhaps K-State receivers need to do the same for their 6-foot-4 and 247-pound tight end.
Sinnott coming out nowhere to grab 28 passes for 399 yards and four touchdowns, many of which were memorable highlight plays, helped K-State reach its full potential on offense this season.
Malik Knowles ended the year with a career-high 719 yards and two scores. Phillip Brooks wasn’t far behind with 543 receiving yards and four touchdowns. Deuce Vaughn piled up 378 yards and three touchdowns as a receiver. And then there was Kade Warner, who had never reached the end zone in a college football game before this season, cruising into Sugar Bowl with 408 yards and five touchdowns.
“He has allowed us to play the game more inside out,” Warner said Thursday during a Sugar Bowl news conference. “He opens up the run game inside because Ben is such a good blocker. He opens up the passing game because Ben is so dynamic as a receiving threat. I’m so happy for him, because at the beginning of the year we all messed him and called him blocking tight end a fullback. Now he goes out there and Mosses dudes every week and he has a new celebration every time he catches the ball.”
Sinnott first began turning heads when he caught four passes for 80 yards during a crucial road victory over Oklahoma earlier this season.
The Sooners spent so much time accounting for K-State stars like Knowles, Vaughn and then quarterback Adrian Martinez that they forgot to defend Sinnott as he streaked across the middle on vertical routes. Martinez found him for one easy gain after the next.
Everyone started paying attention to Sinnott when he grabbed seven passes for 89 yards and a touchdown against Baylor and then followed that up with 85 yards and a score against West Virginia.
K-State played rival KU the week after that, and Howard was suddenly unable to connect with his favorite tight end because the Jayhawks were throwing double teams and complex zone coverages at him. They weren’t going to let Sinnott beat them. So Howard threw to other targets for 213 yards and two touchdowns while K-State rushed for 230 yards.
“He’s out there blocking and running routes. Sometimes he’s a decoy. He’s doing all these things for us,” Vaughn said. “Man, we can’t put into words how thankful we are for Ben. He’s been a reliable target all these games and he’s been somebody who Will can kind of fall back on whenever he is rolling out of the pocket.”
The crazy thing about Sinnott’s rise is that it might not have happened at K-State had he grown up in any other town in the country.
Sinnott was originally committed to play college football at the FCS level for South Dakota, but Klieman stepped in at the last minute and convinced him to switch his allegiances to K-State as a walk-on. Why? Well, there are plenty of reasons. Sinnott is a tall, athletically gifted football player with a high upside at tight end. But mostly Klieman really liked the idea of recruiting a player from his home town.
Klieman is also from Waterloo, Iowa, and if he was going to take a chance on anyone during the 2020 recruiting cycle it was going to be on someone who shared his roots.
“I definitely came to Kansas State because of Coach Klieman,” Sinnott said. “I was also talking to Iowa and Iowa State about walking on there, but I felt the love here with him being from my home town. It felt like a home once I got here. I could trust everything he was telling me. Obviously, things worked out really good.”
Little was expected of Sinnott when he first stepped foot on campus. He didn’t even weigh 200 pounds yet.
But after a few years of putting in extra work in the weight room and eating pretty much around the clock, he changed his body and bullied his way to the top of the depth chart.
He also earned a scholarship.
“That happened last January,” Sinnott said. “It was awesome, one of the best days of my life. When I walked away from South Dakota it was because I didn’t want to put a ceiling on myself and then that happened. I couldn’t believe it. I instantly called my parents, because that was one of my biggest motivators to take that pressure off them. They trusted in me and gave me a two-year trial to make it happen, and I did.”
Now there seems to be no limit to how far he can go.
The Wildcats are hoping he stays on his upward trajectory. Like Klieman said, his rise has helped the entire team.