This is the Depth Dossier: the Kansas State Wildcats, Week 7.

Kansas State let Kansas score seventeen points before halftime even mattered, and the Wildcats still walked away with their eighteenth straight win in the series, a 35 to 24 final that looked a lot messier than the final score suggests.

Quarterback Avery Johnson threw for 209 yards and ran for 132 more, running back Joe Jackson added 159 yards and a touchdown, and together they powered 359 rushing yards as a team. Kicker Luis Rodriguez had a perfect night, hitting four field goals including a 51-yarder, bailing out drives that stalled in the red zone. A bizarre safety off a punter's fumble flipped momentum late in the first half, and from there Kansas State took over the clock, holding the ball for over 36 minutes to Kansas's under 24. Linebacker Logan Bartley's fourth-quarter interception sealed it.

The opening 13 seconds set the tone for how strange this one would get. Kansas State scored on a quick five-play drive to open the game, and Kansas answered instantly with a 95-yard kickoff return touchdown from Bryson Hayes, suddenly leading 17 to 7 in the first quarter. Wide receiver Derrick Salley Junior answered right back with a 45-yard catch, part of a day where he averaged 35 yards per catch on just two receptions.

From there the stat sheet and the scoreboard told different stories. Kansas State out-rushed Kansas 359 yards to 168 and was gaining well over seven yards a play, but all that control in the first half only produced field goals, not touchdowns. That gap between dominating the game and actually finishing drives is why this one stayed close so much longer than it should have.

Then there was that safety. Kansas punter Matt Gill fumbled the snap deep in his own end zone, and it ignited an eleven-point second-quarter surge for Kansas State that turned a ten-point deficit into an 18 to 17 halftime lead. Between that and the kickoff return touchdown, special teams chaos shaped the first half as much as anything either offense did.

The second half looked completely different. Kansas State leaned into clock control, grinding out long ground-heavy drives, including an eleven-play possession that ate more than five minutes in the fourth quarter. Add Bartley's interception on top of that, and Kansas never got a real chance to answer.

Now, switching over to the depth chart. There were no injuries reported this week, so all the movement here is about roles, and it's almost entirely on defense.

Up front on the defensive line, Wendell Gregory and Travis Bates both climbed to about three-quarters of the snaps, and Eli Jackson jumped up to around a third of the snaps. That came at the expense of Kamari Burns, who dropped down to a similar third-of-the-snaps role.

At linebacker, it went the other way. Mekhi Mason got trimmed back to around three-quarters of the snaps, Rex van Whye dropped to about a third, and Asa Newsom fell all the way to spot duty, a real step back for a group that had been playing heavier minutes.

In the secondary, Nick McClellan climbed to about two-thirds of the defensive back snaps, while Adrian Maddox was cut back to spot duty. None of this has been tied to injury or discipline in the reporting, so for now it just looks like a performance-based shuffle rather than anything confirmed.

Offensively, nothing changed at the top. Johnson and Jackson are still doing the heavy lifting, and Rodriguez remains the first option any time a drive stalls near the goal line. With the defensive line and secondary both in flux, how that retooled rotation holds up next week is the thing worth watching.

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