Rapid Recap: Kansas State OL Christian Duffie unlikely to play

Kansas State is hopeful on Johnson

Though they are not optimistic on every Kansas State injury situation at the moment, offensive coordinator Collin Klein conveyed some optimism when speaking about receiver Keagan Johnson, similar to what we heard from head coach Chris Klieman earlier in the week.

He used the word “hopefully” as well, but he was really upbeat and pretty confident about them being able to stretch Johnson out a little further this weekend and increase his snap load from game two. Johnson saw 16 snaps, all in the second half, against Troy.

Klein revealed that his new wideout turned the corner at the end of the last week and has continued to build on that this week with zero setbacks.

Duffie’s status

I’m not sure if it was due to a setback but Klein did not share the same attitude about the status of K-State offensive lineman Christian Duffie. Not only did he miss the first two games of the season, he has yet to be in uniform and missed all of training camp as well.

According to the Kansas State head coach, he has practiced a bit. It may be more likely that he begins his 2023 season when the Wildcats host UCF or when they return from the bye week. Carver Willis has been the starting right tackle through the first two contests.

Evolution of Jadon

Klein noted that Kansas State was pretty comfortable with how they were going to use receivers Phillip Brooks and RJ Garcia and how much, but it was still unsettled at the end of training camp what the picture looked like for both Keagan Johnson and Jadon Jackson.

Obviously, in the case of Johnson, some of it was due to his injury and being banged up a little bit. But the staff also just knew the least about those two and had yet to coach them in a live game where the bullets are flying.

We’ll likely see the most of Johnson this week, but the K-State staff does enjoy how Jackson has settled into a comfort zone. He played in the absence of Johnson and scored touchdowns in each of the first two contests.

They are thrilled with his development and improvement. It wasn’t always that easy, and he had to really grind to get where he is now at Kansas State. It took committing to his craft a bit more and really changing his body as well.

Once he did both of those things, he ascended.