Kansas State offensive coordinator Collin Klein and defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman met with the media on Thursday to discuss the Wildcats’ upcoming game against Texas Tech.
Among the topics discussed were the play of Will Howard and the potential of using true freshman Avery Johnson at points during the game. Klein mentioned that, while Howard is the team’s starting quarterback, they have a plan for Johnson this week.
The transcript and videos of each coordinator’s press conference are available below.
Offensive Coordinator Collin Klein
On what happened at Oklahoma State: “Well, a lot did, and a lot didn’t. It was obviously a frustrating night in a lot of different areas. We’ve got to find and be better at consistently getting better in all phases of the offense week to week. You know, we haven’t been able to stack two or three where all areas have been improving. Obviously disappointing. I think the biggest thing is when you’re on the road, we have to take care of the football, and we can’t get penalties and have mental errors. It’s very easy to start taking little things for granted. From our perspective, it starts with us as the staff and down to our players and those little, little things add up really, really fast. That’s what leads to a performance like that.”
On what Texas Tech presents defensively: “They’re a really long group. They got really good length up front. I think they’re twitchy. I think they got good pass rushers, and those four guys up front pin their ears back and come after you a little bit. They’ll play a lot of man coverage, and they got some length and some good cover guys in the back end. They’ll be aggressive. They were aggressive against us last year, and it’s something we’re going to have to make sure that we handle and take one step at a time.”
On deciding when to play Avery Johnson: “Yeah, to this point, at least when it’s been close, it’s been a little bit of a feel, been a little bit schematically some of the things that we had in the game plan for how we thought we were going to get to provide us an advantage. I think we’ve got a good plan for Avery moving forward in this week, but obviously Will (Howard) will be the main guy, so that’s kind of how we’ve worked it. He’s going to be just fine.”
On the chance of seeing new receivers: “I think there’s a chance. I think there’s a couple of young guys that could get in there. I’d say probably Jayce Brown would jump to the top of the list in my head for that, that might get on the field and have a chance to make an impact.”
On if he agrees with Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire calling the game a war: “I definitely do. I remember every time I went down to Lubbock as a player for sure. It’s going to be an evening game, hostile environment. I think they’re a physical bunch, aggressive bunch, and it’s going to come down to who’s able to execute and make some plays and not make some mistakes. I think it’s a good description.”
Defensive Coordinator Joe Klanderman
On what was different about the Oklahoma State game: “I thought probably for the first time this season maybe we didn’t win the physical battle at the line of scrimmage. There were certainly some individual matchups that I thought we did an okay job with, but I thought they were the more aggressive football team. When we’re not making plays in their backfield, and when we’re playing on our side of the line scrimmage it’s never going to be a good thing. They did a nice job of getting the ball out on the perimeter and dinking and dunking and kind of getting us a little bit tentative, and that’s the end result.”
On what he sees in Texas Tech’s Tahj Brooks: “He’s phenomenal. I think he’s probably as hot of a back as there is in the league right now. Just a really bigger back, a guy that’s tougher to bring down, a guy that’s very patient, really does a good job of keeping his feet underneath him, never gets himself overextended. It’s hard to get good shots in on him. I think he’s good in the pass protection. I think he does a lot of things really, really well. I think he’s a really good football player.”
On watching the defense lose the physical battle: “It doesn’t happen very often, you know? I think that’s where some of our leadership’s just got to continue to progress. I think when you have a guy like Deuce (Daniel) Green rally the troops, and it’s not any individual, it’s just the aggressiveness by which we play. If we’re trying to be right all the time, and we’re trying to be just perfect in everything that we do instead of going out and playing football, that’s never going to be a good situation. If we’re sitting there analyzing instead of attacking, we’re always going to be a step behind.”
On what defense can do to create more turnovers: “We’ve kind of fallen into this. We’re playing a lot more man coverage, which I think inherently is going to, maybe with less eyes on the football sometimes that ends up being a situation that creates less turnovers, just because you don’t have as many eyes on balls. We’re not doing anything differently than we’ve done in the past. We couldn’t be emphasizing it more. I mean, we do turnover circuits all the time. We drill it, we watch it, we do it in practice. It’s just not materializing on game day. I think sometimes turnovers are magical things. Sometimes they come in bunches, and then sometimes you go in droughts. But again, I think when we play with aggression, and when we just have that mentality, I think that’s when those things start to happen a little bit more frequently.”
On what the defense did in the red zone at Oklahoma State to force field goals: “I just thought we executed a little bit better when we got down there. I think we got our feet underneath us. We didn’t make any magical calls or do anything different. Guys just bowed up and did their jobs. I think that had we done that maybe earlier in the series, we wouldn’t have had those situations in the first place. But I think it just comes down to our aggression and our execution.”
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