15 January 2024
MANHATTAN (KSNT) – Conor Riley will continue to coach K-State’s offensive line in 2024, but he’ll also be calling the plays.
Shortly after the Pop-Tarts Bowl win, K-State promoted Riley to offensive coordinator.
“Chris [Klieman] and I had conversations leading up to that bowl game [about] my desire to take over this position and fill the shoes of Collin [Klein] and those that have come before me… something that I’ve been wanting to do my entire life,” Riley told 27 News. “There shortly after the bowl game Coach Klieman and I got together and [he] told me that the job was going to be mine. [I’m] obviously extremely thrilled, very humbled and excited about this new challenge moving forward.”
Riley sat down with 27 Sports Director Glenn Kinley for an exclusive interview which aired on K-Nation. He has plenty of ideas and goals but doesn’t plan to enforce a complete overhaul in the Wildcats’ offensive scheme.
“We want to really take a good evaluation of where we’re at offensively during the offseason, which is something we typically do,” Riley said. “Then from there, we’re going to make some tweaks but I would see a lot of similarities from our offense moving forward.”
Riley will work alongside Matt Wells, who was hired as K-State’s co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
“When Coach [Klieman] told me about the opportunity of working with Matt Wells, I was elated,” Riley said. “From the amount of respect that I have for him back when he was the head coach at Texas Tech, obviously you look at his body of work at Utah State with [Jordan Love]… I’m just really excited to work with and see the additions that he can bring to this offense.”
Riley says he will call plays from the booth, as he did in the bowl game. It’ll be a slight adjustment after coaching on the sidelines for nearly two decades.
“It takes a lot of the emotion out of it and if you’ve seen me down on the sideline coaching before, there’s some emotion involved,” Riley said. “In order to get the next play call in and in order to get the next personnel grouping and keep that consistency I think it’s very important to remove yourself from some of that emotion.”
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