Why K-State expected to stuff KU for a safety: ‘We repped that play about 80,000 times’
Damian Ilalio had a weird feeling that Kansas State would pull off the ultimate defensive score heading into a rivalry game against the Kansas Jayhawks on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
That is why he zoomed onto the field with the speed of a streaker when he realized Kansas would be starting its first drive of the second quarter from its own 1-yard line, after an ill-advised kickoff return from KU cornerback Jameel Croft.
A safety, which would give K-State two points and the ball, was there for the taking.
“I was pretty confident that I was going to get a safety,” Ilalio said. “We try to envision it and manifest it. So I went out there thinking, ‘I’m going to get a safety right here.’”
He was confident for a reason.
“When they lined up, I saw the motion come in,” Ilalio said. “I saw the tight end go in the backfield, and we repped that play about 80,000 times during the week. It was double-split zone. I knew where I was supposed to fit at.”
Sure enough, the junior defensive tackle who grew up in Manhattan read the play perfectly.
The Jayhawks gave the ball to running back Devin Neal and asked him to carry the ball up the middle behind of a pair of lead blockers. But they were unable to successfully execute the play when K-State defenders stormed into the backfield and cut off Neal’s ability to bounce to his right and hit a hole at the line of scrimmage.
Ilalio, a 6-foot-2 and 300-pound defensive brute, wrapped his arms around Neal and drove him to the turf in the KU end zone for an obvious safety.
The Wildcats went on to win a back-and-forth game by exactly two points, 29-27. So that tackle for loss turned out to be a huge moment in the game.
K-State didn’t do anything fancy on the defensive stop. It simply repeated what defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman had previously instructed in practice against that formation.
“That’s part of what Coach Klanderman says, doing the doing routine plays at a high level,” Ilalio said. “I feel like that was just a routine play at a critical moment. I was able to deliver. So it was really nice.”