Eastern Kentucky Good, Bad, & Ugly

(This post was written last week but I couldn’t post until now. Come back for the Good, Bad, and Ugly of the Kent State game soon.)

I know it’s been well over a week since the Kansas State Wildcats opened up the 2011 football season but sometimes it’s best to let some time pass before you really speak your mind! Had I posted my immediate reaction soon after I witnessed the game vs. Eastern Kentucky, it might not have been very useful.  Instead, I waited a week and really let everything that took place that night sink in. Continue reading to see the good, the bad, and the ugly and look at what it means moving towards this weekend.

The Good

Sell-out crowds – If nothing else, the K-State faithful did their part and loaded Bill Snyder Family Stadium to the hilt with purple.  The crowd of 50,292 remained in their seats until the end despite having to endure a level of sucktitude that might have put the game of football back a few years. Maybe it was the post-game fireworks. Maybe it was the excitement of seeing Mr. Snyder win number 150. Maybe it was the awesomeness that is college football. Whatever kept you in the seats, thanks and EMAW!

An early bye week – HCBS said it himself, what normally is undesirable might actually be a huge plus going forward for this team. (You know it’s bad when this is one of the good things.) I don’t know that the team we saw two Saturdays ago would have been able to prepare for another team to come in and focus on the major flaws that became oh so obvious against Eastern Kentucky. Thankfully, the Wildcats got a huge wake-up call and had a full week to work on some fundamentals before using this week to game plan specifics for Kent State.

Pulling it out – As much as there was that went wrong, K-State still got the W. At the end of the season, this still goes in the left column and ultimately that’s all that counts. The team pulled it together when needed, overcame mistakes, and played big when it mattered the most. It wasn’t pretty, but just imagine how different our world would be right now if we were heading into week 3 sitting at 0-1.

The Bad

Flipping – The biggest hope of most fans during the off-season was that there would be major changes to the defensive coaching tree.  Months went by. No change. Hope was lost. After finishing the 2010 season as basically the worst defense in college football I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of good to come from that unit. I figured our offense would need to average somewhere around 40 points per game to make us competitive. Instead, our defense played incredible (yes I know it was against EKU) and our offense was non-existent. The normal offseason plan is to fix the weaknesses and bolster the strengths. Instead, K-State seems to have flipped which will not be a good strategy for continued success. Even if Chris Cosh proves to be a miracle worker, having the offense that showed up September 3 won’t get us to a bowl game. In the high scoring Big 12… err Big 10… uhh Big 9… or maybe Big 5 by next week… 7 points won’t win anything.

The Ugly

Turnovers – There’s nothing that takes victories away quicker than giving the ball away. K-State turned the ball over five times (4 fumbles, 1 int) which makes the fact that they still won even more amazing.  There’s nothing more to explain. Fix this, or throw the season away.

Starting slow – The last thing anybody wants is to have to wait 3 quarters into the season to see the first points put on the board. The Wildcats came out looking unprepared to play. The offense obviously had a horrible time figuring anything out and the turnovers killed, but even the play selection seemed uninspired. I feel like that’s a staple of HCBS early season plan but when nothing is happening it might be time to open it up a little. The entire game reminded me of the Chiefs preseason and we all saw how well that worked out.

Where to go from here…

I might have the biggest purple colored glasses around but I think K-State might actually be alright. This game has to be a major wake-up call to the men sporting the Powercat and you know Bill Snyder has plenty of game film to use as motivation. Any sense of security/swag is gone which only leaves hard work ahead. Hard work produces wins, swag doesn’t. Get to work Wildcats and come out ready to do work against the Golden Flashes! What the heck is a Golden Flash anyways?