Chris Klieman ready to make big changes as nightmare season continues for K-State

Consistency is one thing you can usually count on from the Kansas State football team with Chris Klieman as head coach.

The Wildcats have averaged nine victories over the past four seasons, and they won a Big 12 championship in 2022.

Some fans have griped that K-State should have a higher ceiling that includes an occasional berth in the College Football Playoff, but there is no arguing with the floor. Under Klieman, the Wildcats have won at least eight games in all five of his seasons that weren’t played during a pandemic.

Until now, that is.

K-State will need quite a mid-season turnaround to reach bowl eligibility after suffering a 23-17 loss at Arizona on Friday. The defeat dropped K-State to 1-3 and 0-1 in the Big 12. It’s been a long time since EMAW nation has seen a record this bad.

You have to go all the way back to Bill Snyder’s first year as head coach in 1989, when things were so ugly for the program that a 1-3 start was celebrated.

“I pride myself, and I pride our coaching staff and our teams, on being a sustained winner,” Klieman said. “And right now, we’re not that. I’ve got to own it. We’ve got to own it as a football staff and a football team.”

Klieman spoke during his postgame news conference as if Friday’s loss served as a last straw, of sorts, for him.

“I’m not throwing in the towel,” Klieman said. “But we have got to figure this out, because we have got kids that want to be good in there. And I’ve got a lot of pride. We are going to get this thing figured out.”

How?

That is a difficult question. But it’s clear what K-State is doing at the moment is not working. The Wildcats couldn’t make clutch plays against Iowa State, they barely escaped with a victory over North Dakota, they got embarrassed at home by Army and then they never possessed a lead beyond the opening moments at Arizona.

K-State gained just 193 yards on Friday. That was a pitiful number for a team that featured Avery Johnson at quarterback, Jayce Brown at wide receiver, Dylan Edwards at running back (for one quarter) and a handful of tight ends who have put up big numbers in the past. Johnson, once thought to be among of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12, threw for just 88 yards. His rushing yardage (-16) was even worse.

He was severely outplayed by Arizona QB Noah Fifita.

Of course, very few K-State players were better than their Arizona counterparts on Friday.

“I just felt like we were real slow in all aspects,” Johnson said. “It was the offensive line, running backs, receivers, me at the quarterback position. It was like we had no fire.”

K-State linebacker Desmond Purnell was asked if the team has been playing with enough energy and passion to win.

His answer spoke volumes.

“At moments we do,” he said. “I feel like we need to stay the course, the whole 60 minutes, in order for us to start getting wins.”

Klieman thinks K-State needs to change more than that to recover from a disappointing start to the season.

Things clearly aren’t working for the Wildcats right now, and he is ready to admit it.

“We’ve got to do some evaluating ourselves as a staff of what we need to adjust and change,” Klieman said. “Because I don’t know what our identity is right now after four games. I thought I did after Iowa State, but that hasn’t come to fruition.”

Klieman was then asked what he would like his team’s identity to be.

He responded with a long answer that touched on every phase of the game. On defense, he wants to get back to stopping the run. Right now, opposing running backs are bouncing to the outside far too easily for big gains. On offense, he wants to find a way to run the ball without Dylan Edwards in the starting lineup.

Edwards returned from injury for Friday’s game, but he was limited to 13 yards on four carries before he exited with a noticeable limp.

Klieman also wants to see improved play from the offensive line so the Wildcats can sustain drives.

“We did not win the line of scrimmage today,” Klieman said. “That was the biggest thing that I saw ... I feel bad for (Johnson) because I think he’s playing well enough for us to win, but he’s not getting the time.”

There will be much soul-searching over the next two weeks before K-State returns to action against UCF on Sept. 27.

Little has gone right for K-State this season. The Wildcats are not the consistent winners they have been throughout Klieman’s tenure in Manhattan.

There is time for that to change, but the margin for error is smaller than ever after another disappointing loss.

This story was originally published September 13, 2025 at 6:00 AM.

Kellis Robinett

The Wichita Eagle

Kellis Robinett covers Kansas State athletics for The Wichita Eagle and The Kansas City Star. A winner of more than a dozen national writing awards, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and four children.