The Privilege of Winning Pt.1
So much of life is made up of the differences between expectations and outcomes. Imagine you’re driving to work and you get a flat tire, causing you an entire day of headache and stress. Maybe, on a happier note, you receive an unexpected increase in compensation at work, resulting in an instant jolt of happiness. It's the differences between our expectations and outcomes that determine our current state.
The 2022 season for Kansas State was nothing short of spectacular. A nine-win regular season team, followed by a Big 12 championship and an appearance in the Sugar Bowl. Truly a remarkable year.
With that success came a reward. Chris Klieman will be receiving an additional $1.5 million per year, while the assistant coaches collectively saw a $1 million bump in total staff salaries. K-State is making a concentrated effort to retain talent to continue this level of success.
This level of money and success comes with a justified increase in expectations. You pay coaches for what they’re going to do, not what they've done previously. The standard has been set and elevated. Winning Big 12 Championships, especially after the departure of OU and Texas, should be expected, and any deviation from that pursuit should result in constructive criticism. These sorts of things might sound cold and rigid, but this is the cost associated with winning. Having expectations is a privilege and should be viewed as a positive.
The overarching question entering 2023 is, Can K-State do it again? Most media predictions I have seen slate K-State competing for the Big 12 championship. Does K-State have the focus, mindset, and personnel to achieve this? Let’s explore K-State’s prospects a little more closely below.
Historical Precedent
There is no doubt that Deuce Vaughn was the heart and soul of this K-State program. Replacing his leadership and production will be a constant theme discussed leading up to the season. In an effort to conceptualize how difficult a task replacing Vaughn is, I ran a year-over-year analysis to determine if losing high-usage players resulted in a gain or drop in points per game. For reference, Deuce Vaughn’s usage in 2022, as defined by his total number of rushes and receptions, finished at 345. This ranked third among all college football players and second among P5 schools.
I went back and took ten years of points per game data, filtered it for players in P5 conferences, and playing in their final season. I then subtracted the points per game for the next season from the final season of the players and averaged the differences.
The results I found were rather surprising. On average, losing a high-performing usage player did not materially impact points per game from one year to the next. I originally thought there was going to be a significant downturn offensively, but the data proved otherwise. Digging into the numbers a little deeper, it seems there is a high degree of variance in the data. Large increases were offset by large decreases to net a roughly zero change in points per game. Last season, K-State averaged 32.2 points per game, good for 37th in the country. Take this conclusion with a grain of salt as points per game can increase/decrease for a variety of reasons; A positive sign is the data does not overwhelmingly point to a decline. In fact, thinking through this counterintuitively, it might build more resilience and openness in an offense by introducing more players and schemes that would have otherwise been implemented.
With the returning pieces K-State has this year, a reasonable amount of comfort can set in that the offense is poised to improve.
Starting Five
One of those primary pieces returning is an offensive line anchored by First-Team All-Big 12 performer Cooper Beebe. With eight offensive lineman classified as juniors or above, numerous players and combinations have started and rotated for this starting five. Any success for the offense in 2023 will start with this veteran group.
In 2022, K-State rushed for 208 yards per game, good for second in the Big 12 and 15th nationally. The room for improvement will need to come from pass blocking. K-State gave up 21 sacks last season, good for 40th nationally. I think you can make a reasonable case that a mobile QB such as Adrian Martinez can place the offensive line in a peculiar position when it comes to scrambling which could skew the numbers a bit.
With the expected production from the offensive line to remain at a bare minimum the same as last year, I think this is an advantage that can only benefit K-State late in the season in pursuit of repeating their championship run.
Circular Reference
Presumably, K-State has its quarterback situation dialed in. Will Howard, the once frustrating performer, proved the doubters wrong and performed at a high level to finish the season.
I am not going to knock Howard’s performances; he did great and won the Big 12 Championship. However, I do think a bit of context is needed for the defenses he played against. Howard started games against Okie State, Baylor, West Virginia, KU, TCU, and Bama. Respectfully, those defenses as ranked by points per game were as follows: 89th, 68th, 116th, 124th, 91st, and 9th. I am not going to label TCU as that bad; a lot of those points were skewed towards their final two games in the playoff. However, this begs the question: were the Big 12 offenses that good last year, or were the defenses so incompetent that it drove good offense? I am sure the answer is somewhere in between those two thoughts.
If the Will Howard we saw those final games was that much better than Adrian Martinez, why did K-State start Martinez and utilize him how they did last season? That is one situation that never made sense to me. What did Martinez display in practice that proved he was the better QB from the start? I can see the redshirt angle of this situation, but Martinez clearly had to have struggled in practice. What did the coaches know that we did not know?
While Howard performed marvelously last year, I am doubting he will see the historically poor performing defenses he did last year. Meeting this challenge will be a key theme for the fourth year QB in order to sustain and improve on the success he had last season.
Remission
I would be remiss if I did not make note of the surrounding skill position cast that K-State will have next season. Ben Sinnott, Phillip Brooks, Keagan Johnson, DJ Giddens, and Treshaun Ward. I am hard-pressed to think of a better skill position group in recent years than what K-State has lined up here. I do not need to rehash the statistics, but Ben Sinnott is a matchup nightmare. He and Phillip Brooks will complement each other in a big way this season.
Nobody stays the same from one season to the next. Teams either get better or they get worse. That is why success at the highest levels is so difficult to maintain and impressive when it is achieved.
I do not think from an offensive perspective you can ask for a better setup. Returning offensive line, returning Big 12 Champion QB, returning skill position. Can the K-State offense match and build on their success from last season, albeit in a different way? Time can only tell, but winning another Big 12 title is now the expectation and should be approached as such.
In part two of this series, we will look forward to what the defense has to offer and touch on the broader subject of ESPN + for 2023.