Kansas State's defense can't seem to stop leaving Tulane players wide open in the first half

After a rough first half last week against UT Martin, Kansas State fans were hoping to see a different Wildcat squad this week in the first half. Well, fans got what they wanted, but not in the way they wanted it.

The Kansas State offense is still struggling to put points up on the point with only one touchdown in the first half, but the defense is showing signs of struggle against Tulane's offense.

Last week against UT Martin, the defense seemed to be firing on all cylinders, but that might have been the case of "it's an FCS team" syndrome. Now in Week 2, the Wildcats are playing a more evenly matched team in Tulane, a Group of Five team in the running to get that last conference champion spot in the College Football Playoff spot at the end of the season.

It looked like the defense was off to a solid start in the first half after forcing Tulane to turn it over on downs with a big fourth-down stop, but it all went downhill from there.

The Wildcat defense struggled to stop the run as Tulane's running backs are running at will, but the more concerning part is that the wide receivers seem to be catching passes completely wide open.

Tulane scored their second touchdown of the day was scored on a wide-open pass to Green Wave receiver Alex Bauman for 36 yards. Tulane managed to continue to get large chunk plays again and again with young quarterback Darian Mensah slinging the ball for 218 yards on 11 of 14 passes in the first half.

Now, don't think the defense was the only part of the team that struggled in the first half, the offense showed a lot of first-half struggles as well. While there were some great things that happened on the offensive side of the, like Avery Johnson's across-the-body throw to Will Swanson for the lone touchdown, there are still some concerning things going on.

Johnson has shown his youth a bit with struggles throwing the deep ball which included a missing Sterling Lockett wide-open for what would have been a touchdown that would have made the game 17-20 heading into halftime instead of the current 10-20 score due to a missed 53-yard field goal by Chris Tennant as time expired in the first half.

Johnson is still a young quarterback learning to build his craft in college football. He has shown signs of greatness in this game with a could of great runs and a few low percentage throws that were completed, but fans are always going to expect more.

A lot of adjustments need to be made at halftime on both sides of the ball for Kansas State. If the Wildcats could just get some more stops, it would give momentum to the offense, and momentum is everything in football.

Kansas State trails 20-10 at halftime against Tulane, but luckily they get the ball to start the second half and can come out and make this game a one-possession game again to start building that momentum.