K-State’s Secondary a Major Concern
By Cole Manbeck
I would love to spend the entirety of this blog post raving about the job Kody Cook did at quarterback Saturday at Oklahoma State. Considering the circumstances, he was spectacular. However, I have always been one to linger on the negatives and what must be improved, so the focus of this post is about K-State’s struggling secondary.
Let’s preface this by stating the obvious: the Wildcats really miss Dante Barnett at safety, and his presence would certainly change the dynamics of the K-State secondary. Still, his absence doesn’t necessarily excuse the performance of the pass defense through four games.
The secondary was supposed to be a position of strength heading into the 2015 season, led by two returning starters at cornerback entering their senior seasons. That has not been the case. In four games, K-State has intercepted one pass – a deflected ball picked off by linebacker Will Davis on Saturday in Stillwater, Okla. Only five teams in the entire Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) have intercepted fewer passes than the K-State defense. This is a problem, because the Wildcats lack the explosive weapons on offense to continually sustain long drives. If K-State is going to be successful, it needs to create turnovers and put the offense in advantageous situations in terms of field position.
K-State’s run defense – led by Travis Britz, Will Geary and Jordan Willis and others, has been terrific. The Wildcats are holding teams to 2.3 yards per carry, the fourth-best mark in the country. So K-State has made teams one dimensional, yet the secondary is still having significant issues.
K-State’s three FBS opponents have attempted an average of 48 passes per game against the Wildcats. No team in the country has had more passes thrown against it in FBS games than K-State. The Wildcats’ three FBS opponents have produced 81 percent of their total offense via the passing game when facing K-State, the highest mark in the entire country. K-State’s FBS opponents are passing on 63.3 percent of their offensive plays against K-State, the most of any team in the FBS. K-State is allowing more than 29 completions per game against FBS opponents, the most in the FBS.
Those numbers are why having just one interception – and it coming from a linebacker – is concerning. Because the Wildcat corners are getting so many opportunities to pick off quarterbacks by the sheer number of volume of throws coming their way, and they’re not doing it. It’s hard to blame the defensive line, which has been stout against the run. K-State has put pressure on the quarterback, averaging 3.5 sacks per game thus far, a number that ranks 10th-best in the country. Against FBS opponents, K-State has sacked the quarterback 7.1 percent of the time he drops back, ranking 33rd in the country. The pass rush could certainly be better, but it’s not the problem.
After reading these numbers, you may feel like K-State hasn’t necessarily been a team that forces interceptions under defensive coordinator Tom Hayes. The numbers say otherwise:
| Season | Interceptions | Average per game | National Rank | Big 12 Rank |
| 2015 | 1 | 0.25 | 118th | 10th |
| 2014 | 15 | 1.15 | 23rd | 3rd |
| 2013 | 17 | 1.30 | 23rd | 4th |
| 2012 | 18 | 1.38 | 12th | 2nd |
| 2011 | 18 | 1.38 | 12th | 2nd |
K-State is only one-third of the way into the season, so there are opportunities to improve these numbers. But looming on the horizon are the likes of TCU’s Trevone Boykin, Baylor’s Seth Russell, West Virginia’s Skylar Howard, Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes and Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield. Russell (No. 1), Mayfield (No. 5), Boykin (No. 6) and Howard (No. 11) rank in the top 11 in the country in passing efficiency. Mahomes is 25th. Between the five of them, they’ve combined for 20 interceptions on 753 passes. So the odds aren’t favorable to the Wildcats racking up a lot of interceptions in conference play unless something changes.
Now, having said all of this, K-State has been respectable as far as yards per pass attempt allowed, giving up 6.6 yards per throw against FBS opponents and ranking 43rd nationally. K-State is allowing 4.8 yards per offensive play through four games, ranking 32nd in the country. So it’s not all bad.
The Wildcats are getting a decent amount of production out of their offense given the circumstances. But this isn’t a group that can afford to get into offensive shootouts consistently. So it needs the secondary – and the defense as a whole – to start making some plays on the balls and forcing the issue in the defensive backfield
