Five key storylines to watch in Kansas State’s next Big 12 football game vs. TCU

Good vibes have returned to the Kansas State football team.

Fans are once again feeling optimistic about the future as the Wildcats are coming off a convincing 38-21 victory at Texas Tech in which they unlocked an impressive new element on offense with freshman quarterback Avery Johnson rushing for five touchdowns.

K-State (4-2, 2-1 Big 12) will be favored in both of its next two games, at home against TCU and Houston. Win those, and all of a sudden the Wildcats will head to Texas with an opportunity to pull off an upset that could put them right back in the Big 12 championship picture.

Of course, the Wildcats need to take care of business between now and then for that scenario to play out. TCU (4-3, 2-2 Big 12) is the first team standing in the way at 6 p.m. on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

Here is everything you need to know to start preparing for this week’s game.

TCU at Kansas State: Game details

Kickoff: 6 p.m. Saturday

Where: Bill Snyder Family Stadium

TV: ESPN2

Radio: KCSP (610 AM) in Kansas City and KFH (1240 AM and 97.5 FM) in Wichita

Betting line: K-State by 7.5 with an O/U of 56.5

Five things to know

1. Kansas State has a quarterback conundrum on its hands. It will be extremely interesting to see how head coach Chris Klieman handles the QB position this week. Will he stick with Will Howard as the starting quarterback? Will he hand the keys to the offense to Avery Johnson coming off his monster game at Texas Tech? Will he play them both? All options seem on the table. Klieman was noncommittal about a plan when he last spoke to media on Saturday. We might even see two quarterbacks share the workload. “Avery and Will are both really good football players,” Klieman said. “We need both.”

2. TCU will likely play a freshman quarterback. Starting quarterback Chandler Morris was unavailable with an injury last week while TCU demolished BYU 44-11 in Fort Worth. It’s possible he will return to action against K-State, but there appears to be no reason to rush him back onto the field. Josh Hoover, a redshirt freshman, played admirably at quarterback last week by throwing for 439 yards and four touchdowns. The offense will most likely be in hands.

3. These teams gave us two highly entertaining games last season. TCU rallied from a big early deficit and beat K-State in the regular season. Then the Wildcats defeated the Horned Frogs in overtime of the Big 12 championship game. Is there something about these teams that simply leads to fun, back-and-forth games? We shall see on Saturday when they play for the first time since December.

4. The Wildcats might not be able to easily run the ball against the Horned Frogs. Both of K-State’s early conference wins had something in common. The Wildcats ran the ball effectively in both games. Running back DJ Giddens had 293 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns against UCF and Johnson piled up 90 yards and five scores as a runner against Texas Tech. It may be hard to achieve that same level of success against TCU, which has one of the best run defenses in the Big 12 and is only allowing 3.4 yards per rush.

5. K-State will try to build on the three turnovers it created on defense against Texas Tech. The Wildcats surrendered 298 passing yards against the Red Raiders, but they negated most of that production by coming up with three interceptions in the second half. K-State may try and duplicate that formula this week, as the Horned Frogs are averaging 304.1 passing yards per game and the Wildcats are allowing 265.5 passing yards per game. A few more interceptions could once again make big yardage irrelevant.