Week 2 didn’t have a ton going on across the Big 12 and what good matchups there were largely went sideways for the conference. In a major reversal of years of tradition, LSU came into DKR and put on a clinic for modern spread passing offense. I’ve really only seen a handful of Big 12 … [Read more…]
Nickel became the standard “base defense” for the Big 12 sometime around the turn of the decade. Honestly I haven’t done the research to pinpoint the exact year but Texas went base nickel in 2008, Oklahoma State was starting Shaun Lewis as their “star” LB in 2010, and of course Oklahoma rolled in nickel as … [Read more…]
Klieman’s Wildcats have a few players on defense that could potentially make for an unexpectedly strong group in 2019. This defense was one of the league’s best at the start of the decade with S&P+ top 25 units in 2012 and 2013 and then still another solid group in 2014 that finished 42nd. Then some … [Read more…]
I noticed this very interesting tweet recently from @GPCWallace about Klieman’s first real recruiting class at K-State: As a contrarIan, my initial reaction was, “well congratulations. K-State has loaded up on their normal allotment of 22 3-stars before the rest of the non-Texas/OU has done so. Big deal.” But there’s a lot more to recruiting … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall this week I wrote on the 21 spread. Technically 21 personnel means two RBs and one TE, but can often mean a variety of things. Oklahoma in 2017 ran a lot of 21 spread if you defined Mark Andrews as a TE, Dmitri Flowers as a FB, and then the … [Read more…]
I took the chance to watch the press conferences from Kansas State’s new offensive and defensive coordinators, Courtney Messingham and Scottie Hazelton as well as some of the players that were made available. There was a lot to glean from their occasionally frank appraisal of the roster and the league. The big picture standpoint While … [Read more…]
I’d been tracking Chris Klieman at North Dakota State for several years before he become the head coach at K-State. You can read some thoughts on his systems and how it all might translate to K-State in this article over at Football Study Hall. In short, he built some bruising teams up north in Fargo that dominated FCS competition with … [Read more…]
…by hiring Chris Klieman of North Dakota State. I’ve been watching North Dakota State for several years now and have lots of notes from some of their showdowns with FBS schools, rival South Dakota State, and their title game bouts with James Madison. I broke down some of Klieman’s strategies and how they translate to … [Read more…]
As a Texas grad, I’ve been here before. Your program is replacing a legend who was losing his touch. It wasn’t easy to convince him to hang things up and now he’s probably going to stick around and be a helpful or hurtful force depending on the circumstances. You hated to see him go but … [Read more…]
I’ve always loved watching Bill Snyder’s teams. I’ve particularly enjoyed the second Snyder-era for which I’ve been a Big 12 blogger and active observer of the league. His teams this decade have always been designed to try and game college football with calculated strategies and recently I’ve learned more about his original run at K-State … [Read more…]