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Drenning: Getting Better Each Week
November 19, 2014 10:59 AM | General
Radio sideline reporter Jed Drenning is providing periodic commentary on the Mountaineer football program for WVUsports.com. For more from Jed, you can follow him on Twitter @TheSignalCaller
It’s easy to forget how wretched the Kansas State football program was before Bill Snyder arrived in The Little Apple.
If you’re a member of Generation Z, you weren’t around for it. K-State has been a mainstay in the college football landscape you’ve grown up watching, always playing a respectable or even prominent role.
If you’re part of Generation Y, the darkest days of Wildcats football probably took a backseat to more meaningful things in life like finding a date to the middle school prom or debating who was cooler - Emilio Estevez in Young Guns, Tom Cruise in Top Gun or . . . Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun?
If, however, you’re a Gen X’er like I am, you might actually remember KSU’s days as the laughingstock of the old Big 8 Conference. And laughing we did – plenty of it.
By the time the 1988 season drew to a close, Kansas State wasn’t on life support. It had officially flatlined. KSU was winless in its last 26 games (including 21 losses by double digits). Worse yet, it was a program that in its 93-year history had lost more than 60 percent of its games and had never –- as in ever -- won a bowl. A punching bag of a program that throughout the 1980s found itself on the business end of a steaming heap of scores like 70-24, 62-14, 56-14 and 59-10. Manhattan, Kansas, was the land of “a lot to a little” on the scoreboard.
Then -- on November 24, 1988 -- Bill Snyder happened.
As evidenced by the 185 career victories he brings to Morgantown this week, Snyder’s formula at K-State has been effective.
The Wildcats don’t bedazzle. They don’t mystify. They’re more utility jeep than muscle car. But they win. In fact, KSU has won enough football games to help Snyder rack up no fewer than five National Coach of the Year awards.
K-State preaches things like commitment, unselfishness and unity and they pride themselves in a walk-on tradition that often produces All-Conference or even All-America performers. Kansas State is a program that transforms unsung recruits into overachieving pros, quietly assembling the longest active NFL Draft streak in the Big 12 (21 years).
For years Snyder has made a modest request to his Wildcats, asking them to get a little better each day. On most days, they oblige. Two Saturdays ago in Fort Worth, Texas, however, they didn’t. Despite heading into Amon G. Carter Stadium as the No. 7 team in the College Football Playoff ranking, Kansas State was ambushed 41-20 by a talented TCU squad.
But don’t let that deceive you. K-State is a fundamentally sound football team that refuses to help you beat them. The Wildcats will step off the bus at Milan Puskar Stadium as the least penalized team in the Big 12 Conference (fourth-least penalized nationally). They’ve suffered the fewest turnovers in the Big 12 (fifth-fewest in the country) and they lead the league in Red Zone Offensive Efficiency. Defensively, K-State has allowed the fewest big plays (30-plus yards) of any team in the Big 12. In fact, the Wildcats have ranked in the top 20 in the country in that category each of the last three seasons.
So how might the Mountaineers land a few punches and score their first win over Kansas State since Herbert Hoover was in office? Here are a few things to consider as kickoff approaches.
1) AIR SNYDER?
Pop quiz. Since the West Virginia defense first ventured into the pyrotechnic world of Big 12 passing games in 2012, what school’s quarterbacks have consistently inflicted the most damage? Sure we’ve seen some remarkable efforts from various gunslingers the last couple of years (Baylor’s Nick Florence throwing for 581 yards; Texas Tech’s Seth Doege and Oklahoma’s Landry Jones each tossing 6 TDs; Tech’s Davis Webb throwing for 462), but that pales to the gruesome nature of the defensivectomy KSU quarterbacks have performed on West Virginia the last few seasons. In two games, Wildcats signal callers have combined to go 38-of-44 (86 percent!!!) for 624 yards and seven touchdowns. Pitching in to do his part in last year’s 35-12 KSU win in Manhattan was former junior college All-American Jake Waters (10-13-198-3/0). The weapon of choice in the K-State aerial assault on WVU has been Mountaineer killer Tyler Lockett. In just two games against West Virginia, Lockett has managed 17 grabs for 305 yards and five scores.
The good news? If the first 10 games have served as any indication, this year’s Mountaineer defense appears better equipped to keep a lid on explosive passing games than the units West Virginia peddled out against K-State the last two seasons. In those games, WVU allowed a Big-12 worst 2.4 completions per game of 30-plus yards. Through a combination of pressure, deception and simplicity, Tony Gibson’s 2014 defense has managed to shave that figure to 1.3 per game, third-best in the conference.
The bad news? Waters, Lockett and the KSU passing game don’t represent the only way the Wildcats can beat you offensively. Behind a road grading offensive line anchored by All-Big 12 center B.J. Finney and tackle Cody Whitehair, the Wildcats feature a physical running game that has helped them control tempo and lead the conference in time of possession. In fact, despite Snyder’s newfound affinity for playing pitch and catch (in a four-game sampling the Wildcats threw the football 58 percent of the time), the KSU ground game is still the lifeblood of this offense. In their seven wins the Wildcats have averaged 192 rushing yards per outing. In their two losses that figure dwindles to 37 yards per game. The dilemma for Tony Gibson is an obvious one. Can West Virginia use enough smoke and mirrors to throw sufficient numbers toward the box in run support without exposing itself on the backend to the big-play potential of Tyler Lockett?
2) BE READY TO EARN IT
If patience is a virtue, Kansas State defensive coordinator Tom Hayes must be Saint Augustine.
His defense postures. Then it waits. And it waits. Then it waits some more until finally you crack under the demands of a lengthy drive. The Wildcats don’t know what specifically will get you, nor do they seem to care. It might be a key holding call, or a sack, or a false start on third and 2, or even a turnover. The actual form that your mistake arrives in doesn’t matter. What matters to them is knowing quite simply that the longer they can keep you on the grass the greater the odds tilt toward your offense committing a gaffe.
If they can force you off the field in three snaps, all the better. But their philosophy is built on never panicking when that doesn’t happen. Instead, with a pair of battle-tested upperclassmen parked up top (junior strong safety Dante Barnett and senior free safety Dylan Schellenberg), a shrewd group of linebackers and a rugged defensive line (see: defensive end Ryan Mueller and defensive tackle Travis Britz) that plays with a chip on its shoulder, KSU focuses on minimizing your gain on each individual snap.
If you move the chains on third down so be it, but K-State is bent on seeing to it that nothing comes easy. They don’t suffer cheap gains. If the Wildcats can put a lid on things and keep you out there six plays instead of you scoring in five, that’s a win. Eight plays instead of you scoring in six – advantage KSU. Ten plays instead of eight; Twelve plays instead of 10, etc. As they see it, if their entire unit can remain fundamentally sound for the duration of a long drive they will typically win the moment (with a stop, or a turnover or even a field goal in the red zone) because the 11 guys on offense can rarely match that level of efficiency for just as long.
It’s a creed they buy into – and they have become very, very good at it. You see it in their habits on tape and in the pursuit angles they take on every snap. Moreover, you see it in their numbers on the stat sheet. Hayes is very selective about rolling the defensive dice. Unlike a lot of other Big 12 coordinators he doesn’t take a bucket of chances or often sacrifice numbers in an effort to disrupt, as demonstrated by Kansas State’s modest pressure numbers (ninth in the Big 12 in sacks; eighth in Tackles for Loss). Instead, they often sit back and let the game come to them - thriving on your imperfections and betting on the fact that you will miss an assignment before they do.
The fact that K-State is 36-12 in their last 48 games means this approach typically works – but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes an opposing offense indeed proves efficient and patient enough itself to make KSU pay for their lack of aggression.
Case in point – two weeks ago at TCU. The Frogs challenged the Wildcats at the point of attack early and often and won. They gashed Kansas State for 334 yards on the ground, the most by a Texas Christian offense in 39 games. TCU stuck with the running game and it paid off, but that hardly is to suggest that K-State’s front seven is a piñata that West Virginia can tear apart with a few healthy swings. This is the same Wildcats defense that in a mid-September match up did what no defense in the SEC has done this year by holding Gus Malzahn’s Auburn offense to less than 130 yards rushing.
The key here is don’t press the issue offensively. Stay ahead of schedule on all three downs and if KSU is accommodating enough to let you drive 10 plays without constant pressure, take advantage of it. Take a deep breath every few snaps and remind yourself that you don’t go broke making a profit, even if that profit’s a small one. If you pick up four yards on three straight downs don’t feel the undue need to force an ill-advised play on the next one. This is much easier said than done – but that’s how these guys get you.
So here we go for another primetime showdown during a frigid week in Morgantown. Maybe in this case West Virginia can steal a page from Bill Snyder’s playbook and just try to get a little better each day. A year ago in The Little Apple the Mountaineers led 12-7 before K-State took the lead with a little more than 17 minutes left in the game, scoring 28 unanswered points en route to a 35-12 final score.
The Mountaineers are a better football team than they were in that loss last October.
How much better?
Seventeen minutes better I hope.
I’ll see you at the 50.
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