Growth in the Offseason
Mar 30, 2026 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
It's been proven in Kansas State football through the years that one of the biggest jumps a player typically makes in his career comes between his freshman and sophomore seasons. Linkon Cure, the highest-rated signee in K-State history and the nation's No. 1-rated tight end out of high school, figures to be a prime candidate to experience a jump in his sophomore campaign with the Wildcats.
The 6-foot-5, 245-pound Cure, who arrived at K-State as the 30th-rated overall player in the Class of 2025 by 247Sports, was slowed at the start of his freshman season as the 2025 Shaun Alexander National Freshman of the Year award watch list nominee missed the first three games of the season due to injury.
Cure finished the season with six catches for 37 yards over 139 offensive snaps in nine games with a pair of starts. Listed as a tight end, Cure often split out as a wide receiver. He had two catches for 18 yards at Kansas and two catches at Oklahoma State.
K-State head coach Collin Klein, at his initial spring football news conference last week, indicated that he was excited for what's next for the native of Goodland, Kansas.
And for good reason.
"In the program, (Cure) had the highest mass gain and most fat loss, which for an athlete to be able to put that together is very impressive with him already being an elite athlete," Klein said, "so credit to his work ethic."
It's a reunion of sorts for Brian Lepak, who coached K-State tight ends, then shifted to coach the offensive line, and now is back coaching tight ends for the 2026 season.
"Linkon Cure is a unique deal, just because I recruited him, then switched to offensive line, so I didn't really get the chance to hands-on directly coach him," Lepak said. "It's fun for me to actually get to do that now."
Klein appeared eager to help bring out the best in Cure's talents as Cure continues to progress through spring football.
"He gives you a ton of position versatility for sure," Klein said. "He's a worker. He attacks everything he does. He's attacked some of the nuances and different things that we're doing. He'll play the tight end position predominately — the Y in 11 and F in 12 — more off the ball in nature collectively, but he gives you the flexibility to line him all over the field. Whether we're in 12 personnel, we'll still use a lot of two-tight end sets, so whether it's in 12 personnel — there's flexibility there — or 11 personnel giving you some open-set 10-type personnel pictures, he gives you a lot of flexibility.
"I'm excited about how he's worked."
Klein wins early by increasing the size of the football staff
Consistent with Klein's theme that "it's going to take everyone," the first-year head coach, who spent the previous two seasons coaching in the SEC as offensive coordinator at Texas A&M, bolstered the K-State football coaching staff and support staff over the past three months.
Last season, the K-State football staff included 52 members.
This season, that number has grown to nearly 60 staff members.
"Staff size has grown over the years," Klein said. "Gene Taylor has been outstanding in positioning and helping us facilitate that. The speed of everything is just faster from an organizational standpoint than it ever has been in college football. The amount of recruiting landscape and scope and net you have to put out, the level of communication that happens throughout that recruiting process, the amount of kids you have on campus at certain times and how you handle all of that, and touch people the way we want to touch them, and impact people the way we want to impact them, and the player development piece is so important."
Last season, K-State had 11 full-time coaches. Now it has 13. Last season, K-State had five assistant position coaches and analysts. Now it has 13. The recruiting staff increased from seven to 10 members as well. This staff features one graduate assistant coach, five strength and conditioning coaches, seven members in sports medicine/sports science/nutrition, three in football operations, two in video, three in creative and three in equipment.
Klein in particular emphasized the benefits to having a larger recruiting staff.
"We're going to be a developmental program," Klein said. "We're going to continue to dominate our seven-hour radius of recruiting with high school athletes, but we have to develop them faster. I tell our guys all the time, 'We're on the 12-to-18-month cycle, not the three- to four-year cycle like it used to be.' The amount of energy, effort and time it takes to do the job how it needs to be done is so much more than what it used to be and you have to have the right people in the right place and you have to have more of them. There's a lot of man hours invested in that."
Klein pleased with the addition of a special Oklahoma State transfer duo
Immediately after Klein was named K-State head coach in December, it was time to go to work. His newly hired assistant coaches arrived in Manhattan and many long days and nights followed. Klein called this transfer portal cycle "one of the craziest two weeks of my coaching career for dang sure just with how fast everything happens in a matter of hours at times."
K-State came out the other side with a one-two punch out of Oklahoma State that could perhaps rival any transfer duo from a single school in the FBS — sophomore defensive end Wendell Gregory and sophomore running back Rodney Fields Jr.
The 6-foot-3, 255-pound Gregory earned Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year honors along with All-Big 12 accolades while being named a semifinalist for the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award. He had 27 tackles, 12.0 tackles for loss, 4.0 sacks, one pass breakup and one forced fumble while playing in every game with four starts and seeing time on 419 defensive snaps and 51 special teams plays.
Gregory was the 11th-best edge rusher in the transfer portal by 247Sports, and he was ranked No. 24 among all players in the transfer portal by On3. Gregory said that Texas, Ole Miss, Alabama and Georgia pursued him in the transfer portal.
Now Gregory calls K-State home.
Gregory calls Klein "a great guy" and he heard from new K-State defensive coordinator Jordan Peterson shortly after he entered the transfer portal on December 16. Gregory received a strong endorsement from new K-State running backs coach Cory Patterson, who served as Oklahoma State running backs coach last season.
"Coach Patterson told K-State about me and said, 'We need this guy,'" Gregory says. "Coach Patterson had nothing but good things to me. All I care about is defensive scheme, development, and how well I'm going to get coached. My position coach, Coach Buddy Wyatt, is a great coach, and he's put a lot of people in the NFL. I 100% want to be the next one to go to the NFL."
Gregory, who transferred to Oklahoma State after one season at South Carolina, displayed his skills early in Stillwater. He reached home base early and often as a redshirt freshman last season. In his first game at Oklahoma State, he had three sacks in the season opener against UT Martin on August 28. It marked the most sacks by an Oklahoma State freshman in school history and tied the Big 12 freshman record set by Missouri's Aldon Smith in 2009.
"I bring versatility," Gregory said. "Sometimes I'll line up as middle linebacker doing stunts with my defensive tackles, and obviously, when I'm off the edge I can go back in space and put the tight end on his butt if I want to if he's trying to run a route. I'm definitely going to get to the quarterback, so I'm getting off the ball every single play. My versatility is big."
Meanwhile, Fields rushed for 614 yards and one touchdown and had 28 catches for 276 yards and one touchdown his freshman season at Oklahoma State. His 614 rushing yards ranked sixth among Power 4 freshman, while his 276 receiving yards ranked third among Power 4 freshmen running backs. His 28 receptions ranked third among Power 4 freshman running backs and were the third most for the Cowboys in 2025. Fields ranked sixth in the Big 12 with 98.89 all-purpose yards per game.
His best performance was a 163-yard effort against Cincinnati that featured a career-long rush of 41 yards and one touchdown. His 190 scrimmage and all-purpose yardage total were the most among Big 12 freshmen in 2025, while his rushing total ranked second.
"I've been proud of both of them," Klein said. "Rodney is coming off surgery from last season, so he's been more limited, and I'm very, very proud of Wendell and how he's attacked the work. Obviously, he's extremely talented. He has a great God-given skill set. I've been very, very impressed with his motor and how hard he's worked and prepped himself these past few weeks to put that skillset to work.
"I'm excited to see how that goes."
It's been proven in Kansas State football through the years that one of the biggest jumps a player typically makes in his career comes between his freshman and sophomore seasons. Linkon Cure, the highest-rated signee in K-State history and the nation's No. 1-rated tight end out of high school, figures to be a prime candidate to experience a jump in his sophomore campaign with the Wildcats.
The 6-foot-5, 245-pound Cure, who arrived at K-State as the 30th-rated overall player in the Class of 2025 by 247Sports, was slowed at the start of his freshman season as the 2025 Shaun Alexander National Freshman of the Year award watch list nominee missed the first three games of the season due to injury.
Cure finished the season with six catches for 37 yards over 139 offensive snaps in nine games with a pair of starts. Listed as a tight end, Cure often split out as a wide receiver. He had two catches for 18 yards at Kansas and two catches at Oklahoma State.
K-State head coach Collin Klein, at his initial spring football news conference last week, indicated that he was excited for what's next for the native of Goodland, Kansas.
And for good reason.
"In the program, (Cure) had the highest mass gain and most fat loss, which for an athlete to be able to put that together is very impressive with him already being an elite athlete," Klein said, "so credit to his work ethic."
It's a reunion of sorts for Brian Lepak, who coached K-State tight ends, then shifted to coach the offensive line, and now is back coaching tight ends for the 2026 season.
"Linkon Cure is a unique deal, just because I recruited him, then switched to offensive line, so I didn't really get the chance to hands-on directly coach him," Lepak said. "It's fun for me to actually get to do that now."
Klein appeared eager to help bring out the best in Cure's talents as Cure continues to progress through spring football.
"He gives you a ton of position versatility for sure," Klein said. "He's a worker. He attacks everything he does. He's attacked some of the nuances and different things that we're doing. He'll play the tight end position predominately — the Y in 11 and F in 12 — more off the ball in nature collectively, but he gives you the flexibility to line him all over the field. Whether we're in 12 personnel, we'll still use a lot of two-tight end sets, so whether it's in 12 personnel — there's flexibility there — or 11 personnel giving you some open-set 10-type personnel pictures, he gives you a lot of flexibility.
"I'm excited about how he's worked."
Klein wins early by increasing the size of the football staff
Consistent with Klein's theme that "it's going to take everyone," the first-year head coach, who spent the previous two seasons coaching in the SEC as offensive coordinator at Texas A&M, bolstered the K-State football coaching staff and support staff over the past three months.
Last season, the K-State football staff included 52 members.
This season, that number has grown to nearly 60 staff members.
"Staff size has grown over the years," Klein said. "Gene Taylor has been outstanding in positioning and helping us facilitate that. The speed of everything is just faster from an organizational standpoint than it ever has been in college football. The amount of recruiting landscape and scope and net you have to put out, the level of communication that happens throughout that recruiting process, the amount of kids you have on campus at certain times and how you handle all of that, and touch people the way we want to touch them, and impact people the way we want to impact them, and the player development piece is so important."
Last season, K-State had 11 full-time coaches. Now it has 13. Last season, K-State had five assistant position coaches and analysts. Now it has 13. The recruiting staff increased from seven to 10 members as well. This staff features one graduate assistant coach, five strength and conditioning coaches, seven members in sports medicine/sports science/nutrition, three in football operations, two in video, three in creative and three in equipment.
Klein in particular emphasized the benefits to having a larger recruiting staff.
"We're going to be a developmental program," Klein said. "We're going to continue to dominate our seven-hour radius of recruiting with high school athletes, but we have to develop them faster. I tell our guys all the time, 'We're on the 12-to-18-month cycle, not the three- to four-year cycle like it used to be.' The amount of energy, effort and time it takes to do the job how it needs to be done is so much more than what it used to be and you have to have the right people in the right place and you have to have more of them. There's a lot of man hours invested in that."
Klein pleased with the addition of a special Oklahoma State transfer duo
Immediately after Klein was named K-State head coach in December, it was time to go to work. His newly hired assistant coaches arrived in Manhattan and many long days and nights followed. Klein called this transfer portal cycle "one of the craziest two weeks of my coaching career for dang sure just with how fast everything happens in a matter of hours at times."
K-State came out the other side with a one-two punch out of Oklahoma State that could perhaps rival any transfer duo from a single school in the FBS — sophomore defensive end Wendell Gregory and sophomore running back Rodney Fields Jr.
The 6-foot-3, 255-pound Gregory earned Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year honors along with All-Big 12 accolades while being named a semifinalist for the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award. He had 27 tackles, 12.0 tackles for loss, 4.0 sacks, one pass breakup and one forced fumble while playing in every game with four starts and seeing time on 419 defensive snaps and 51 special teams plays.
Gregory was the 11th-best edge rusher in the transfer portal by 247Sports, and he was ranked No. 24 among all players in the transfer portal by On3. Gregory said that Texas, Ole Miss, Alabama and Georgia pursued him in the transfer portal.
Now Gregory calls K-State home.
Gregory calls Klein "a great guy" and he heard from new K-State defensive coordinator Jordan Peterson shortly after he entered the transfer portal on December 16. Gregory received a strong endorsement from new K-State running backs coach Cory Patterson, who served as Oklahoma State running backs coach last season.
"Coach Patterson told K-State about me and said, 'We need this guy,'" Gregory says. "Coach Patterson had nothing but good things to me. All I care about is defensive scheme, development, and how well I'm going to get coached. My position coach, Coach Buddy Wyatt, is a great coach, and he's put a lot of people in the NFL. I 100% want to be the next one to go to the NFL."
Gregory, who transferred to Oklahoma State after one season at South Carolina, displayed his skills early in Stillwater. He reached home base early and often as a redshirt freshman last season. In his first game at Oklahoma State, he had three sacks in the season opener against UT Martin on August 28. It marked the most sacks by an Oklahoma State freshman in school history and tied the Big 12 freshman record set by Missouri's Aldon Smith in 2009.
"I bring versatility," Gregory said. "Sometimes I'll line up as middle linebacker doing stunts with my defensive tackles, and obviously, when I'm off the edge I can go back in space and put the tight end on his butt if I want to if he's trying to run a route. I'm definitely going to get to the quarterback, so I'm getting off the ball every single play. My versatility is big."
Meanwhile, Fields rushed for 614 yards and one touchdown and had 28 catches for 276 yards and one touchdown his freshman season at Oklahoma State. His 614 rushing yards ranked sixth among Power 4 freshman, while his 276 receiving yards ranked third among Power 4 freshmen running backs. His 28 receptions ranked third among Power 4 freshman running backs and were the third most for the Cowboys in 2025. Fields ranked sixth in the Big 12 with 98.89 all-purpose yards per game.
His best performance was a 163-yard effort against Cincinnati that featured a career-long rush of 41 yards and one touchdown. His 190 scrimmage and all-purpose yardage total were the most among Big 12 freshmen in 2025, while his rushing total ranked second.
"I've been proud of both of them," Klein said. "Rodney is coming off surgery from last season, so he's been more limited, and I'm very, very proud of Wendell and how he's attacked the work. Obviously, he's extremely talented. He has a great God-given skill set. I've been very, very impressed with his motor and how hard he's worked and prepped himself these past few weeks to put that skillset to work.
"I'm excited to see how that goes."
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