Rapid Recap: First camp for Kansas State assistant Matthew Middleton

Kansas State work ethic and commitment

Work ethic and commitment was the central focus of what Kansas State assistant Matthew Middleton had to say on Wednesday afternoon. After walking off the field from practice, most of his answers revolved around his players working their butt off and it mattering to them.

Specifically, he called out RJ Garcia and Keagan Johnson as two K-State wideouts that devoted a lot of energy to their craft because of how much they care about succeeding but also because of how much they care about their teammates.

As a whole, the group shows up every day and is willing to put everything they have into it and great examples have been set by the likes of the veterans in the room, such as Phillip Brooks, Seth Porter and Ty Bowman.

First season for Middleton

It was apparent that Middleton is loving his life. Not only has he been hired to his first Power Five gig, he is doing so in the state he grew up in as well. I’m sure his family is happy to be back in Kansas and he’s the wide receiver coach of the defending Big 12 champions.

Kansas State will benefit from his time in an advanced passing offense at Kent State (under Sean Lewis) and his short time with brilliant offensive mind Alex Golesh at USF. And he is blessed with having Johnson, Brooks, Garcia, Porter, Bowman, Xavier Loyd, Sterling Lockett and Jadon Jackson.

At the same time, it is also clear that he’s still learning about his room, what he has, the operations and is still molding the process he wants to have for his receivers at K-State. Porter, Brooks and Bowman have been a big help in that way.

Unsurprisingly, we learned the least about the receivers because he is still adapting to life in Manhattan and continuing to build his approach.

Process of determining depth chart

We did uncover part of his process. To that point, that is part of the reason we don’t know enough about the Kansas State receivers to make enough conclusions. Installation is still ongoing and he has a number of players still attempting to grasp the offense from a conceptual standpoint.

Until that comfort is established, they can’t play fast enough. And Middleton doesn’t want to make any decisions about the depth chart until he sees all of his players able to unwind, unload and let it rip without hesitation.

He won’t know what he wants his depth chart to be until a couple more weeks at the earliest. We can assume that Johnson and Brooks will figure prominently, but everything else still remains a mystery at this point.