Admit it: Much as we try — and we've honestly tried — it's tough to shake those nasty images from Baylor, isn't it?
The last time Kansas State ran into a bunch of track studs disguised as a football team, it didn't end well. Although, technically, it didn't start well, either. On November 17, the then-undefeated-and-top-ranked-in-the-BCS Wildcats, darlings of Sports Illustrated, went to Waco and, on the first defensive play of the game, promptly jumped offsides.
It was all downhill from there: After a quarter and a half, the favorites found themselves down 21-7, hands on hips, wondering what the heck just hit them.
"We had a bunch of people doing other people's jobs instead of doing their own," linebacker Jarrell Childs said of his 11-1 Wildcats, who'll face Bears clone Oregon (11-1) in the Fiesta Bowl Thursday night. "So that's where we broke down."
Baylor was Muhammad Ali, fast and dancing and cocky, but mostly fast. K-State was Sonny Liston, a champ in serious, serious trouble. The Bears took the no-huddle idea to the extreme, snapping the ball as quickly as possible at nearly every turn, trying to exhaust the Wildcat defense right from the outset.
"We prepared for it, but they came out (racing)," was how defensive end Meshak Williams recalled it. "We didn't really know what was going on."
They have a better idea now. They also know that Oregon likes to do many of the same things Baylor does, only — well, better. Bowl games, like NCAA Tournament games, are largely about matchups, and — on paper, at least — this dance partner doesn't exactly fall into Bill Snyder's traditional wheelhouse.
"There are a number of teams that can move around like they do," K-State's coach told reporters earlier this month. "When I say, ‘Like they do, ‘I mean how they reduce it to the tempo of the game, how fast they line up and go. Oregon can go as fast as they want to go."
So here's the rub: Was the Bears debacle — a 52-24 Baylor rout — an aberration, or a harbinger of the Fiesta to come? After all, Snyder's defense faced other quick-strike offenses in West Virginia and Texas Tech and held the Mountaineers to 14 and 24 points, respectively.
Then again, neither of those squads have the amount of sheer burners that the Ducks trot out at nearly every skill position — especially tailback, where Kenjon Barner (1,624 rushing yards, 21 TDs) is a home-run threat every time he touches the rock.
"We need to be mentally focused and not mentally weak," Childs allowed, "which we were at Baylor."
On the flip side, of course, it remains to be seen how badly the Ducks, who had their hearts set on handling unfinished business in the BCS title game, want to be here. NCAA investigators are sniffing around the program, and reports are that Oregon coach Chip Kelly is meeting with at least three NFL teams later this week, win or lose.
And the matchup concern goes both ways, really: On several fronts, K-State closely resembles Stanford, the only team to jackknife the Ducks' arsenal of Lamborghinis. Both the Cardinal — 17-14 winners over Oregon — and Wildcats are disciplined, physical, and, fundamentally, air-tight. K-State defensive coordinator Tom Hayes admitted earlier this week that he'd dissected a good chunk of that Stanford-Oregon game film already.
Then again, when the challenge is containing an offense that's averaged 50.8 points a contest, you'll cling to hope anywhere you can find it.
"But playing Baylor, that helps us," Williams insisted. "Because they do no-huddle, and they do all this fast-tempo stuff. We know we've got to prepare well. We know what we have to do, and (that) they're a fast offense and we have to slow them down."
They probably can't afford to get too far down, either, especially early. The Ducks are 8-0 this season when they score first; under Kelly, they've drawn first blood in 28 contests and won 27 of them. They're 10-0 this season when leading after the first quarter, and 32-1 all-time under Kelly. Once Oregon gets a healthy separation — in terms of yards and on the scoreboard — it's awfully hard to make up that ground.
K-State, by contrast, is more of a feel-you-out type of bunch in the opening 30 minutes, scoring first in only half its games during the regular season. The Wildcats are masters of the third quarter — outscoring foes 138-59 in that period — and stellar closers. Yet they also rarely played from more than 10 points behind; that ugly trip to Waco happened to be the unfortunate exception.
Facing a two-touchdown deficit, K-State quarterback Collin Klein was forced to be a passer almost exclusively, forced to play away from his strengths — namely, his two legs. An offense that prefers a measured tempo acted as if it had to rush to keep up, and for one weekend, what had been a well-oiled machine couldn't stop stalling. K-State's normally mistake-free quarterback tossed an uncharacteristic three interceptions on the night, then watched his lead in the Heisman Trophy race evaporate in a matter of hours.
"Yeah, we can't let that happen," Williams said. "We can't start of slow like that, with a team like that, who moves that fast and everything. So what we've got to do (is), we've just got to run to the ball, pursue, pursue, tackle, tackle — make sure we don't miss any at all. And if we do that, then all's well that ends well, we'll be all-good."
If they don't, we've already got a good idea how that movie's going to play out. And the pictures won't be pretty.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
