Saturday, November 13
Manhattan, Kan.
12:00 PM
West Virginia University
at
Kansas State
Photo by: WVU Athletic Communications
United Bank Playbook – Kansas State Preview
November 10, 2021 12:48 PM | Football
| Tale of the Tape |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Points Per Game | 28.3 | 26.7 |
| Points Against | 21.6 | 23.0 |
| Rushing Yards Per Game | 159.3 | 113.1 |
| Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game | 117.3 | 122.3 |
| Passing Yards Per Game | 219.9 | 259.9 |
| Passing Yards Allowed Per Game | 223.0 | 233.6 |
| Total Yards Per Game | 379.2 | 373.0 |
| Total Yards Allowed Per Game | 340.3 | 355.9 |
| First Downs For | 172 | 192 |
| First Downs Against | 157 | 161 |
| Fumbles/Lost | 10/6 | 18/5 |
| Interceptions/Return Yards | 6/73 | 5/76 |
| Net Punting | 39.2 | 40.6 |
| Field Goal/Attempts | 8/11 | 15/16 |
| Time of Possession | 30:15 | 32:01 |
| 3rd Down Conversions | 44/98 | 49/125 |
| 3rd Down Conversion Defense | 48/122 | 42/124 |
| Sacks By/Yards Lost | 23/130 | 21/136 |
Will we see the West Virginia football team that scored 38 points and generated 492 yards of offense against Iowa State, or the one a week later that scored three points, produced 133 total yards and struggled to get the football past the 50-yard line against Oklahoma State?
That's still to be determined, but Mountaineer coach Neal Brown is pretty confident that his young football team is going to see the best version of Kansas State, which is on a roll right now coming off a pair of decisive victories over TCU and Kansas.
"They're playing their best football of the year," Brown said Tuesday. "They're playing well in all three phases."
Kansas State (6-3, 3-3) began the season with consecutive victories over Stanford, Southern Illinois and Nevada. Then, the Wildcats hit a tough, three-game stretch that saw them drop games to Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Iowa State before their current three-game winning streak against Texas Tech, TCU and Kansas.
A lot of K-State's recent success can be attributed to quarterback Skylar Thompson, who might be playing the best football of his career. In his last three games, the senior is completing 75% of his 75 pass attempts for 792 yards and three touchdowns with only one interception.
He's not running the football nearly as much as he did earlier in his career when he carried the ball 18 times in a 2017 loss to West Virginia, or 14 times the first time he faced a Neal Brown-coached team in 2019.
Past injuries are likely a factor in this.
"He's a veteran," Brown said of Thompson. "He's extremely accurate with the ball. He's a dual-threat guy and does a really good job of extending plays."
In 42 career games, Thompson has passed for 6,579 yards and 38 touchdowns, while running 340 times for 1,089 yards and 26 scores. He has also engineered six fourth-quarter touchdown drives to either tie or take the lead – the most by a K-State quarterback since 1990.
West Virginia missed Thompson last year in Morgantown when injuries limited him to just three games, one of them being a 38-35 victory over Oklahoma.
Thompson has a big-league weapon to utilize in the backfield in sophomore Deuce Vaughn, a 5-foot-6, 173-pounder who is difficult to find behind Kansas State's offensive line. Vaughn has accounted for 1,287 yards from scrimmage and 15 touchdowns so far this year.
They will get the football to him in a variety of ways from a variety of formations, including wheel routes coming out of the backfield. He's caught 63 passes in just 19 career games for 855 yards and five touchdowns.
"Their OC (Courtney Messingham) does a great job getting them in matchups," Brown said.
The Wildcats have two receivers who can take the top off of defenses in outside receiver Malik Knowles, a 6-foot-3, 195-pound junior, and slot receiver Phillip Brooks, a 5-foot-7, 167-pound junior.
Knowles and Brooks are part of a Kansas State offense that's been responsible for nine 50-yard plays so far this year – 12th-most nationally.
Knowles is also a big-time threat in the return game with two career kickoff returns for a touchdown, while Brooks returned a pair of punts for touchdowns in last year's win over Kansas. He's averaging 9.8 yards per punt return this season.
"Deuce is a threat. Their second running back (Joe Ervin) is a good player as well, and then they've got two guys in Phillip Brooks and Malik Knowles, who can really take the top off of it," Brown said. "(Knowles is) a very talented kickoff returner and their slot receiver, Brooks, is a very good punt returner who can make people miss, and he's extremely fast."
Defensively, Kansas State has switched to a version of the 3-3-5 defense Iowa State has popularized, although it still lists two defensive ends and two defensive tackles on its two-deep in this week's game notes.
But Brown said earlier this week that Kansas State has played mostly three-man fronts with sophomore defensive end Felix Anudike-Uzomah (#91) developing into one of the most disruptive players in the Big 12 this season.
The 6-foot-3, 255-pounder had four sacks in the TCU win, and he shows 11 sacks for a loss of 55 yards through nine games so far this season. Anudike-Uzomah, pronounced ann-you-DEE-kay, you-ZAH-mah, is ranked first in the country in sacks per game and is also tops in the country with five forced fumbles.
Brown said Anudike-Uzomah plays with such a high motor that he is sometimes subbed out to keep him fresh at the end of games. K-State regularly uses as many as 25 different players on defense, which has helped it rank 23rdnationally against the run allowing just 117.3 yards per game.
"They're really well coached. They have answers for what you're going to try and do," Brown pointed out. "They are very similar to Iowa State in the schematics of it. They've got a pass rusher (Felix Anudike-Uzomah) who is elite. He leads the league and is right up there at the top of the country in sacks. They've done a nice job in pass coverage as well."
Unlike Oklahoma State last weekend who played predominantly press-man coverage, the Wildcats have been mostly a zone coverage team with some really long corners, such as 6-foot-4, 204-pound junior Julius Brents, and an active strong safety in Jahron McPherson, who is frequently unblocked because of K-State's scheme.
McPherson is fourth on the team in tackles with 38 while also producing six tackles for loss.
Junior middle linebacker Daniel Green is tops on the team in tackles with 57.
"Defensively, we've got to eliminate explosive plays and offensively we've got to be able to run the ball," Brown noted.
West Virginia (4-5, 2-4) has enjoyed recent success against the Wildcats after losing four straight to them when it first joined the Big 12 Conference in 2012. The Mountaineers snapped the losing streak in Morgantown in 2016, and have added wins in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The last two victories at Bill Snyder Family Stadium in 2017 and 2019 have been by margins of five and four points respectively.
"We've got to go on the road, and Manhattan is an extremely tough place to play," Brown said. "We've got to handle all of those things well like we did the last time we went out (versus TCU)."
Saturday's game will kick off at noon and will be televised nationally on FS1 (Eric Collins and Petros Papadakis). Mountaineer Sports Network radio coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. on stations throughout West Virginia and online at WVUsports.com and the popular mobile app WVU Gameday leading into regular network coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning at 11 a.m.
The broadcast is also available on satellite radio at Sirius channel 98 and XM channel 380.
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