Spring football is a time for coaches to experiment.
There is no downside to asking a player to line up in a new spot. Nor is there any fear associated with drawing up a new play or trying out a new formation. College football teams do these things now so they don’t have to resort to trial and error in the fall. The good stuff stays in the playbook. The bad stuff never sees field.
Kansas State did even more experimentation than usual this spring with Conor Riley taking over as offensive coordinator, Matt Wells coming in as quarterbacks coach and Chris Klieman hoping to integrate more defensive formations that include four defensive linemen instead of three.
With spring practice now behind them, it’s fair to wonder just how much change can we expect to see from the Wildcats when the season begins in August.
“A lot,” Klieman said. “A lot. But we are not going to go much further than that.”
He did share a few clues though.
On offense:
“We are doing a lot of similar things, but a lot of different things as far as some run-scheme stuff,” Klieman said. “Then in the pass game we’re doing some things to get the ball on the perimeter a little bit more and taking some shots downfield. There are some things that are going to be different that people have not seen here.”
That last part was evident when reporters were allowed to watch K-State football practice this month. Sophomore quarterback Avery Johnson spent much more time throwing the ball deep to receivers like Keagan Johnson and Jayce Brown than he did a year ago, and he showed nice touch throughout the spring.
Johnson is looking forward to some of the changes that will come with a new coordinator in the press box.
“We have added some stuff,” Johnson said. “We’ve taken some stuff out, trying to simplify it and find stuff that we’re really good at and really pound that stuff. We also want to find the stuff that we didn’t run so much and that we weren’t so good at and take that out of the playbook. We just want to be excellent at a lot of things.”
On defense, the big change will come up front on the defensive line.
K-State is currently blessed with more quality players at defensive end than it knows how to use. Travis Bates, Brendan Mott, Chiddi Obiazor, Tobi Osunsanmi and Cody Stufflebean are all worthy of playing time, so the Wildcats are trying to find ways to get more of them on the field.
That means going away from their traditional 3-3-5 formation, at times, for a look that features four defensive linemen. In those scenarios, the Wildcats want to get three edge rushers on the field at the same time to potentially make things more difficult for the opposing quarterback.
“We did a little bit of that this spring, but not a ton of it,” Klieman said. “We are really doing some four (defensive linemen) stuff, whether that is on early downs or third downs. We had some plans for things, but we got some injuries and we weren’t able to do it all. We had four defensive linemen, really three defensive ends and one defensive tackle.”
K-State fans will have to wait a few months to find out exactly what those changes look like on Saturdays. But it sounds like the Wildcats did some successful experimenting this spring.
Most Popular
Comments / 0