K-State rushing duo Adrian Martinez, Deuce Vaughn becoming ‘a nightmare for defenses’

There was only one player who could catch Adrian Martinez during Kansas State’s 37-28 victory over Texas Tech on Saturday at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

Luckily, for his sake, that player was a teammate.

His name: Deuce Vaughn. And he did catch Martinez on the tail end of one of Martinez’s three touchdown runs against the Red Raiders. It happened early in the fourth quarter when Martinez broke through the line of scrimmage and then zoomed 69 yards for a score that gave the Wildcats a 27-20 lead. Somehow, both Martinez and Vaughn ended up 20 yards in front of the closest defender.

They crossed the goal line together, jumped with joy and then shared a few celebratory words in the end zone before anyone else could pat them on the back.

“I hugged him,” Vaughn said, “and then I said, ‘I love you, big big dog.’”

“It’s really cool that he was that excited for me,” Martinez said. “This team just wants to win. Right now, I’m getting a lot of the touchdowns, a lot of those carries in the red zone, and Deuce doesn’t seem to care at all. He just wants to win, and it’s really powerful, powerful stuff for me.”

Martinez and Vaughn are quickly becoming one of the most explosive rushing duos in all of college football. They put on a show for the 50,782 in attendance by combing for 341 yards and three touchdowns on the ground against Texas Tech.

Martinez, a quarterback transfer from Nebraska, led the way with 171 yards, while Vaughn was right behind him at 170.

It was the second straight game in which they both eclipsed 100 yards. How hard is that to do? Well, this is the first time the Wildcats have produced a pair of 100-yard rushers in consecutive games ... ever. Last week, Martinez entered the Heisman picture by rushing for 148 yards and four touchdowns during a thrilling win at Oklahoma. Vaughn took pressure off him with 116 yards of his own.

No wonder the Wildcats (4-1, 2-0 Big 12) are currently on top of the conference standings.

K-State has struggled to throw the ball all season and only amassed 116 yards and a touchdown through the air on Saturday. But that hasn’t seemed to matter.

Defenses have been unable to stop Martinez and Vaughn since the Wildcats started using their quarterback as one of their primary runners, starting against the Sooners.

“Having those two kids in the backfield is a nightmare for defenses,” Klieman said. “They are home-run hitters.”

The most impressive thing about their rushing production: explosive plays. The Wildcats began the game with a 57-yard run from Martinez and never let their foot off the gas. He went on to score on runs of 18 yards, 69 yards and 12 yards. Vaughn also broke free for a huge gain of 69 yards in the third quarter.

Martinez averaged a whopping 14.2 yards per run. Vaughn finished at 7.4 yards per run.

And they produced those numbers against a rushing defense that entered the day as one of the Big 12’s best, allowing an average of 2.7 yards per run.

“It’s very dangerous,” K-State offensive lineman Cooper Beebe said. “It opens up so much for us, because you have the threat of Adrian running the entire game. On defense, you have got to take somebody out of coverage and spy him. Then there is Deuce. He is just stupid. He’s insane. He makes people miss left and right. He’s just a valuable weapon.”

K-State has been at its best on offense in zone-read situations.

With Martinez and Vaughn in the backfield together, defenses can’t figure out which player to focus on. In each of the past two games, defenders have been so fooled by play action that they tackled Vaughn when he didn’t even have the ball.

They were both on their feet when Martinez had his longest run of this game, though. Martinez was sprinting faster than 20 mph on a designed QB keeper. Vaughn just happened to be down field after running a route designed to keep the defense in check. They ran side by side, as if they were escorting each other into the end zone.

It was a fitting end for another impressive game from each of them.

“It’s kind of like a pick your poison,” Vaughn said. “We’ve thrown in some read options and other things like that to really keep defenses guessing. Who do you want to take away? To have somebody like Adrian back there beside myself, running behind our offensive line, is something that is going to keep working all season.”