Ahead of Kansas State’s Week 13 win over Cincinnati, head coach Chris Klieman made a change to the coaching staff.
Previously, offensive coordinator Conor Riley has spent time in the booth calling plays, but Klieman elected to move around the order of multiple staff members.
Riley left his post in the booth to return to the field alongside co-offensive coordinator Matt Wells, while tight end coach Brian Lepak went upstairs for the birds-eye view.
“Just to get some energy for the O-line,” Klieman said. “I thought that was going to be really important. We’d talked about it a couple of weeks ago, and this week, it was my decision that ‘You’re coming down because I want your energy down there.’ We also wanted to keep [Matt] Wells and Avery together.”
The moves worked well for the Wildcats as the team showed an offensive spark that had not been there in weeks. Kansas State posted their third-most points scored in a game this year and 428 yards of total offense.
“We had Clint Brown, who was an analyst for us last year,” Klieman continued. “He went upstairs along with Coach Lepak and did the best we could of trying to give Riles the information, but I thought it was really impactful between drives to make some adjustments. I thank him for doing that. It was a selfless act, and I said, ‘I want you to do this,’ and he said he’d do anything for me.”
While the odds appear to be slim, Kansas State still has an outside chance of reaching the Big 12 Championship Game if tiebreakers work their magic.
