Cats pile up 300 yards on the ground, and Avery Johnson is finally starting to look good.
A second-quarter disaster felt like last week all over again, but today the Kansas State Wildcats kept their composure and turned the tables, scoring 35 straight points in a 42-20 rout of the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
The Wildcats rolled up 300 rushing yards, 187 by DJ Giddens, while Avery Johnson accounted for five touchdowns — three rushing, two passing — and the Wildcat defense settled down to completely crush the Cowboy running game and forced Cowboy quarterback Alan Bowman into repeatedly throwing the ball either off-target or out of bounds.
The tone was set offensively on the very first play, as Johnson hit Ty Bowman for 19 yards. The Cats churned downfield; a 33-yard touchdown run by Johnson was called back for an illegal shift penalty, but K-State converted twice on fourth down before Johnson scored on an 11-yard run off a scramble to take the early lead.
Ollie Gordon did manage a couple of decent runs in response, but three straight short-yardage stops by the Wildcats held the Cowboys up at the 19-yard line; on 4th-and-4 Mike Gundy chose not to go for it, and Logan Ward kicked a 35-yarder to get Oklahoma State on the board.
The Cats had to punt, despite opening the drive with a 22-yard swing to Giddens. The Cowboys moved downfield in fits and starts, but were again jammed up in the red zone and forced to try another field goal. This one, from 34 yards out, went wide right and the Cats escaped without damage. The Cats once again had to punt, however, and on 2nd-and-5 from the 23, the Cowboys pulled a blatantly obvious flea-flicker which led to a completion to a wide-open De’Zhaun Stribling for a 77-yard touchdown and a 10-7 Cowboy lead.
And then Johnson threw an interception right out of the gate. The defense held well enough to force a 31-yard Ward field goal, but the sequence was all-too-familiar after the BYU debacle.
The Cats bounced back. Giddens broke loose for a 37-yard run, onto which 15 yards were added thanks to a horse-collar tackle; on the next play Johnson fired a strike to Garrett Oakley for a 19-yard score and K-State regained the lead at 14-13.
Oklahoma State was driving effectively, helped by consecutive holding penalties on the Wildcat secondary, but on 3rd-and-3 from the K-State 22 Alan Bowman was sacked and lost the ball. Colby McCalister recovered, and the Cats struck four plays later as Johnson aired it out to a wide-open Jayce Brown for a 55-yard touchdown pass and the turnover scales had more than been re-balanced.
The defense forced a 3-and-out, Gundy inexplicably rushed his punt unit out with the two-minute timeout looming, and Giddens broke free again for 31 yards before the clock hit 2:00. Johnson hit Brown deep again, but Bowman got called for offensive pass interference. The Cats had to punt with 32 seconds left and pinned the Cowboys deep, but Oklahoma State chose to kill the clock and start fresh after the half.
It didn’t help. The Cowboys went 3-and-oout to open the third quarter, and on the second play after the punt Giddens blew through the line for a 66-yard touchdown scamper.
Oklahoma State drove into Wildcat territory, but Desmond Purnell forced a bad throw by Bowman which was collared by Marques Sigle for a huge turnover. K-State went 3-and-out, and very nearly got the ball back inside the Cowboy 15 after what looked like a muffed punt. It was not called a muff on the field, and review seemed to bear that out.
After a near-interception by Keenan Garber, the Cowboys had to punt again, then so did the Cats, then so did Oklahoma State… and then K-State had four out of five plays go for 14-plus yards to set up 1st-and-goal at the 2. A pop pass to tight end Will Anciaux — the last rotation tight end on the roster who hadn’t snagged a touchdown pass so far this season — put six on the board to put the Cats up 35-13.
The next Cowboy drive ended with an end-zone interception by Parrish, and the Cats just cruised 80 yards on nine plays, ending with a 13-yard run by Johnson which really iced the contest. The Cowboys went 4-and-out, failing a 4th-and-1 conversion at their own 25, but the Cats didn’t capitalize, punting from their own 37.
Another 3-and-out resulted, and another, and another. Oklahoma State got the ball back with 4:40 to go, but burned almost three minutes just getting into red zone to try and score some pride points. Trent Howland scored on a 14-yard run to make it 42-20,
Johnson finished 19-31 for 259 yards, with two touchdowns and an interception; he added 60 yards and three touchdowns on only five carries on the ground. Giddens racked up 187 and a score on only 15 carries, plus one catch for 22 yards, giving him 209 in offense on the day. Dylan Edwards had 22 on the ground and 12 in the air. Joe Jackson picked up 31 yards in garbage time as he burned out the clock.
Jadon Jackson was Johnson’s favorite target today, grabbing five balls for 55 yards. Brown, with 78 yards and a score, and Keagan Johnson with 52, each had four catches. Bowman and Oakley each had one catch for 19 yards each, Oakley’s for a score.
The Cats outgained Oklahoma State 559-490 on the day, with a 300-126 edge on the ground. K-State ate six penalties for 49 yards; the Cowboys had two for 20. Time of possession was almost even, a 30:49-29:11 edge for Oklahoma State.
WHAT WE LEARNED
1) The flea-flicker was an embarrassing failure.
Everyone in the stadium saw it. There was no excuse for the secondary to bail on the play, because the nature of the pitch-back to Bowman made it absolutely clear the ball was being thrown. Just an inexcusable lapse on that play.
2) You can’t ignore the run just so you can teach your quarterback to pass.
There is obviously a certain level of “okay, let Avery work on his passing game”. For instance, when you’re up by two scores in the third quarter, or when the other team is stifling your run game.
At halftime, Giddens was racking up over 14 yards per carry on the ground and only had six carries. Oklahoma State is terrible against the run. This was bad play-calling from a purely academic standpoint.
Don’t misunderstand; it worked out. Johnson was 13-19 for 176 and two touchdowns in the first half, and he looked very confident in the second half. It’s not that it wasn’t working, it’s that K-State could have been in position for an early blowout if they’d run Giddens until the Cowboys managed to start stopping him.
3) Why blitz early?
Alan Bowman has been struggling. He got benched last week! Ollie Gordon has been struggling. But K-State came out blitzing, which was directly responsible for Gordon being successful running the ball in the first quarter. Worse, as the game went on it became apparent that the Wildcat secondary was, in fact, capable of covering the Oklahoma State receivers; Bowman was forced to throw the ball away a lot.
Once K-State cut back on the blitzes and made an effort to bottle up the run, the Cowboy offense died; once Gordon was shut down and K-State had the lead, forcing Bowman to the air, the blitz became effective.
Let’s be clear here: we’re not saying “don’t blitz”. We’re saying that going blitz-heavy early left this game in doubt longer than it needed to be.
4) The secondary has improved over recent years in one notable way.
One problem K-State’s had in recent years is giving up big plays because receivers aren’t being tackled. Today, over and over, Bowman would complete a pass but the receiver got absolutely nothing after the catch. This is a key to a bend-but-don’t-break, and the failure to bring receivers down was a huge reason why that scheme used to fail spectacularly at times in the past. Good stuff.
5) Third-and-short is suddenly confusing?
Multiple times this game, the Cats faced third-and-short. Almost none of those times resulted in a handoff to Giddens, and that’s just baffling. You have a freight train available. Why not use it? Simon McClannan punted five times in the first three quarters and it probably should only have been one or two.
The most egregious was the first-quarter punt from the Oklahoma State 47 on 4th-and-4. Punting inside opposing territory is generally considered a bad move anyway in this era of football if there’s any reasonable chance of converting. On a day when you averaged ten yards a carry before garbage time… a day when a seven-yard carry by Giddens felt like a disappointment… punting when you only needed four looks even worse in hindsight.
PLAYERS OF THE GAME
DJ Giddens gets the honors on offense, for his 200-yard day, but we in no way mean to shortchange Avery Johnson here. His start was somewhat shaky, but over the course of the game he found his footing and was legitimately good in the final 40 minutes of the game. On defense, it’s the entire front seven as a group. The Cats recorded no sacks and only two tackles for loss, but the front seven created so much havoc that Bowman had to throw the ball away over a dozen times to avoid sacks.
NEXT
For the first time since 2010, the Wildcats visit the hostile confines of Folsom Field to renew their rivalry with the Colorado Buffaloes. Dylan Edwards may have some feelings about this.