Another agonizing loss creates another crossroads for K-State
BY COLE DEUTSCHENDORF | 365 Sports
For 45 minutes, everything felt right in K-State’s world. The Wildcats, on the heels of a 34-20 win over UCF in which they looked better than they had all season long, had traveled south to Waco, Texas, and held a 14-point lead heading into the fourth quarter over the 3-2 Baylor Bears.
Fourteen minutes and 29 seconds later, they faced a one-point deficit, one which they would not be able to overcome in the final 31 seconds of the game as their 56-yard field goal was blocked, leaving one second left. The collapse was a gut punch in a season that’s been full of them through six games.
They had placed a tourniquet on their early-season flesh wound with their win over the Knights and three-quarters of productive football against the Bears. Now, the team will have to regroup against another explosive Big 12 offense in the TCU Horned Frogs on Saturday. A loss against TCU would send K-State to its worst record through seven games since 1989, Bill Snyder’s first season in Manhattan.
Against Baylor, the Wildcat defense kept them in the game in the first half, intercepting a Sawyer Robertson pass in the red zone and forcing a fumble in Wildcat territory in the first 20 minutes of play. They’ll face a TCU team that has scored 35 points or more in all but one of their games, the lone contest being a road trip at Arizona State. It’s a Horned Frogs passing attack that is averaging over 300 yards per game, good for third in the Big 12. It’s very plausible that fans at Bill Snyder Family Stadium will see a second shootout in as many weeks.
Offensively against Baylor, K-State looked extremely comfortable at times with the occasional bump in the road, something they’ve become accustomed to throughout the 2025 season. Junior quarterback Avery Johnson threw for 344 yards, the most in a Big 12 game in the Chris Klieman era, but he also threw a back-breaking interception deep in the fourth quarter that the Bears returned for a touchdown. The TCU defense has been a mixed bag through its first five games of the season, but it’s a defense that should give K-State opportunities to make its mark on the game.
It was a season that had Big 12 Championship expectations for K-State. At the halfway point, it has been anything but. Now there is one question that comes to the forefront of a chaotic season thus far for K-State: How much fight do they have left? The Big 12 Championship game last year was between two teams that went 7-2 in conference play. K-State sits at 1-2. Do they have the resolve to bear down and turn the season around, or is the season lost before the calendar turns to November? Only time will tell.