‘All on me’: Chris Klieman takes blame for Kansas State’s clock-management error

Chris Klieman sounded like a coach who was answering tough questions after a devastating loss.

“It is all on me,” he said.

“I’ve got to be better,” he added.

“Terrible gaffe,” he concluded. “I’m not accustomed to making those mistakes, and I’ll learn from it. It won’t happen again.”

Wait a minute. Didn’t Kansas State steamroll Arizona State 31-7 in a much-anticipated college football game between ranked teams on Friday night at Bill Snyder Family Stadium?

The No. 15 Wildcats played far and away their best game of this young season, with quarterback Avery Johnson passing for 156 yards and two touchdowns to go along with 110 yards rushing. K-State also flexed its defensive muscles by holding No. 18 Arizona and its high-octane offense to 324 yards and one measly touchdown.

Klieman wasn’t supposed to be apologizing after a game like that.

But the Wildcats committed one boneheaded mistake against Arizona that was so egregious Klieman felt like he needed to address it during his opening statement with media following the game.

That’s what happens when you drive the ball all the way to the Arizona 14 near the end of the second quarter with enough time left on the clock to run several plays ... and let the half come to an end without calling a timeout or attempting a field goal.

Here’s what happened: K-State found itself in plus territory with 37 seconds flashing on the clock. Johnson had just thrown an incomplete pass and the clock was stopped. It was second-and-10. The Wildcats were in the perfect place to take a few shots at the end zone or try a field goal, especially with a timeout in their pocket.

K-State was leading 14-7, so a score of any kind would have been big.

But those plans got turned upside down when Arizona defender Ta’ita’i Uiagalelei sacked Johnson for a loss of five yards. That shouldn’t have ended K-State’s drive, as 30 seconds remained in the half. But the Wildcats showed little urgency to get to their next play.

By the time Johnson got the ball on third down, the game clock was at nine seconds.

If he was going to take a shot at the end zone he needed to do it quickly. Instead, he scrambled for about 15 seconds and then ran out of bounds. The half was over. No touchdown. No field goal. No anything. The score remained 14-7, almost as if the Wildcats had taken a knee and were trying to run out the clock.

In hindsight, Klieman said he should have called a timeout before that final play and explained the situation to his offense. In the moment, though, he didn’t think there was any way that play would take so long.

“I should have called timeout with 13 seconds left and said, ‘Throw it away. We’ll kick the field goal. If it’s not there just throw it out of the end zone,’” Klieman said. “Totally on me.”

Johnson had a different take on what happened.

“I love Coach, and he can try to take the blame for that,” Johnson said. “But, at the end of the day, I have got to know the play clock and know the situation so we still get three points at the end of the half.

“I looked up at the play clock and the clock was rolling. When I looked it said 20 seconds, and I was like, ‘There’s no way I can waste 20 seconds on that play.’ Whenever I ran out of bounds I was walking and thinking we were about to kick it, but the clock was at zero.”

Fortunately, that blunder did not matter in the grand scheme of things.

K-State went on to win the second half 17-0 and turned the game into a blowout.

Afterward, Klieman was asked what his team proved in front of 51,290 fans and a national TV audience.

He said the Wildcats showed they were a complete team and still getting better. He thinks K-State proved it isn’t one-dimensional on offense, and that the Wildcats are better than what they showed during a pair of lackluster victories over Tennessee-Martin and Tulane to start the season.

Those were all good points.

But perhaps the biggest positive to come out of Friday’s game was the fact that the Wildcats could royally screw up a sequence at the end of the first half and still win by a comfortable margin.