Kansas State defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton had his weekly meeting with the media prior to Saturday's Bowling Green game.

It wasn’t just a fluke. It’s also not just the offense. While they’ve repeatedly insisted that Courtney Messingham and company will continue to consistently play a lot of guys (to the point they’ve coined it a hockey line change), defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton wants to do something similar.

He echoed that sentiment on Thursday. Hazelton wants to play a bunch of players, too. They played a lot against Nicholls and intend on doing the same against Bowling Green.

While they haven’t been able to do that at linebacker just yet, they did use three different ones against the Falcons and all pretty evenly. One of those was Daniel Green, who, remarkably, is still just a redshirt freshman. A glimpse into how they view their own personnel is Hazelton considers Green to be a starter as well, just like Da’Quan Patton and Elijah Sullivan.

From a schematic standpoint, Bowling Green will present Kansas State’s defense with something different to prepare for, and Hazelton believes that will benefit the Wildcats in the long run. While they saw a lot of spread from Nicholls and formations and designs that tested them laterally - and will see a lot more of that in the future - the Falcons will be a little more downhill and require a different mind-set, defensively.

The offense they will see this Saturday will actually be closer to the offense that the ones on defense saw for most of fall camp – their own. Because of that, there will probably be a bit more toughness required and a lot more physicality present.

They’re going to walk out of Bill Snyder Family Stadium on Saturday afternoon having been challenged in two completely different ways, defensively. It should be a great learning opportunity.

It does make you wonder how quickly they can make that adjustment and flip that switch when kickoff arrives at 11:00 a.m. against Bowling Green. If there’s a slow start, this could be the culprit.

Though there were no sacks spotted in the stat line, Hazelton is not concerned about the pressure that was applied by the front four in the season-opener. He feels confident the hurries were enough and they’ll turn into sacks and drive-changing plays.

His priority is that the quarterback feels the rush on a consistent basis, even if to disrupt the timing ever so slightly. That’s the important point for him. Hazelton feels confident that took place on Saturday against Nicholls and will look to see that production from his defensive line once again versus Bowling Green.

In our few times interviewing Scottie Hazelton, he’s been very charismatic and pretty transparent, much like head coach Chris Klieman. He typically does not single out any individual, whether it be heaping them with praise or to be critical of their play. It tends to be pretty analytical, but more even and split between the two.

That was not the case towards the end of his press conference on Thursday, ahead of their non-conference bout with the Falcons. He decided to heap a ton of praise and be extremely complimentary of the play of his linebacker, Da’Quan Patton.

It wasn’t just that Patton made tackles and showed great leadership, but it was his effort and playing from the snap to the whistle as hard as he could. It wasn’t one play, but every single play where he would exert full energy for the duration of the play.

It was that energy from Patton that he wants every single one of his players to play with, and he basically stated as much when he shared his hope that it would become contagious to the rest of the team.

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