People too often forget the past and get caught up in the present.
Many people have said that what K-State football coach Bill Snyder wants to run on offense next year is the option attack with a dual-threat quarterback.
It seems every day I hear someone say that Carson Coffman, Collin Klein or Joseph Kassanavoid aren’t Snyder’s typical mold of quarterbacks, that they don’t fit into the offensive system.
And they are right — if they are speaking about a nine-year span from 1997 to 2005.
But many tend to forget that when Snyder arrived at K-State in 1989, he heavily used a pro offense that relied on spreading the field and attacking defenses through the air.
Guys like Chad May, Matt Miller and Brian Kavanaugh had great success for Snyder from 1993 to 1996.
No, they weren’t great athletes in any sense, but Snyder adjusted his offense to fit the players he had on his roster at the time.
He didn’t try to hammer a square peg into a round hole, and that’s what good coaches do — they coach to the best of their abilities to the level of talent they have.
It wasn’t until the arrival of Michael Bishop in 1997 that we really saw the option attack come into the fold at a high frequency.
So at the spring press conference on April 2, the 69-year-old coach fielded questions about the offense he planned to run and the quarterback situation.
He answered the questions diligently and reminded the media just how thick and complicated his playbook can be.
“We have a very broad-based offense,” he said. “It is a complete package. It has been that way for 20 years. I do not think that there is anything you can do in the game that is not in that package.
“It is quite understandable that you cannot do it all. We have no intent to do it all. We will implement every bit of it. Then we will assess how well the young people in our program fit into areas of that package.”
So, no, the three aforementioned guys vying for the starting quarterback job might not be ideal, but Snyder will adjust to them.
If Coffman isn’t comfortable running the option, then don’t expect to see much of a quarterback running game.
But rest assured, one thing that probably won’t be missing under the new staff is fundamental play, something that was missing quite often during the previous three seasons under previous head coach Ron Prince.
“These guys are phenomenal,” junior linebacker Josh Berard said of the coaches. “It’s only been a few weeks and they’ve taught us so much. They emphasize the little things and that’s exactly what we need right now.”
And sometimes, it’s the littlest of things that can make the biggest of differences.
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