Let's think back to, say, spring football, shall we?

Imagine if, at that point, I could tell you Kansas State's passing game would be missing Hunter Rison, Isaiah Zuber, Malik Knowles and Jordon Brown. You'd probably do two things:

One, you'd get really angry and me for giving you so much bad news all at once, understandably.

Two, and more importantly, you'd expect the Wildcat offense to struggle, significantly, to move the football and score points this season.

By now, of course, you know Rison and Zuber transferred, Knowles missed the Oklahoma State game - and 90 percent of the Baylor game - due to injury, and Brown missed all of the Baylor contest.

K-State's offense has sputtered significantly since Big 12 play began, scoring just 13 points against Oklahoma State and 12 against Baylor in back-to-back losses.

The point of all of this is not for me to tell you not to be angry.

First of all, it's not my right to tell you how to feel. But second, I can assure you Chris Klieman is plenty angry, himself. All you have to do is watch the post-game press conference to know as much. Yes, K-State's coach stayed composed, but he was literally a red-faced, angry, agitated, fuming football coach.

What I am trying to suggest, however, is remembering this was always going to be a rebuilding process.

I'm working to remind myself of that, too.

I'm not being a hypocrite, flipping my narrative or trying to talk down to anybody. I was as guilty as anybody of changing my perception of this team after three games.

But, ever since Bill Snyder's tenure ended, I'd tell anybody that listened how long of a rebuilding process this would be. This was still a program, after all, that returned zero scholarship running backs, has less than 10 scholarship sophomores left on the roster and has had nearly 30 players depart the program early in the last 18 months or so of Snyder's tenure.

In the off-season people - fans or media - probably think more with their head than their heart. There are no games going on to impact emotion or let you see what you are selfishly looking for. I think most people's assessment of where this program was, before the season started, was pretty accurate.

Now, toss in technically sound blowout wins over Nicholls and Bowling Green, plus an inspiring fourth-quarter rally (sparked by Knowles 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, it's worth recalling) to win at Mississippi State, and everything changes.

Not only was K-State 3-0, the Wildcats were ranked in both polls and it felt, well, wrong to suggest Klieman's team was still one that should be happy with a six-win season and a bowl appearance.

I picked K-State to win six games this preseason despite talking all off-season about how I thought 5-7 was most likely. Then I thought six wins was suddenly conservative, and I - despite knowing full well what's going on in the passing game - flipped script and picked K-State to beat both Oklahoma State and Baylor.

I was wrong, obviously, but I think the point is worth sharing to make clear I'm just as guilty in getting caught up in moment as anybody.

Personally, what I'm doing with that info, right now, is trying not to get caught up in the moment again.

It's easy to emotionally react to the last two games and fret that the Wildcats won't be able to find even two more wins the rest of the season, let alone the three needed for a bowl game. While that's possible, it's also possible K-State rebounds in two weeks, knocks off TCU to get to 4-2 and would still have games left against the likes of Kansas, Texas Tech, West Virginia and Iowa State.

There's still so much we don't know about a football season that's not even half-way finished.

For clarity, I'm not absolving Klieman and his staff of making mistakes, either. They, like any staff, have done things worth questioning.

At this point I'd imagine he's gained a greater understanding you can't play as conservative as he has in league play. K-State has punted on fourth and medium/short from either midfield or deep in opposing territory, and has also settled for late-game field goals that don't reduce the margin by a score. Both of those things happened in each of the last two weeks in games K-State lost by multiple touchdowns.

This staff is very used to feeling like the hunted at North Dakota State. They felt like the hunters, to me, at Mississippi State by going for a fourth-and-one early in the contest. They didn't get it, but it showed a belief in being aggressive and that field goals wouldn't be enough to beat Mississippi State.

K-State, for better or worse, has not shown the same tendency the last two weeks.

That's not a knock on this staff. It's my personal belief, stronger than it was before this season kicked off, that Klieman and his staff will be successful at K-State.

If we've learned anything, though, it's that Klieman and his staff won't get to magically skip the rebuilding process virtually all of us expected to need to take place over the first couple of seasons of his tenure.

No, they won't say the word, "rebuilding," and they shouldn't for the 24 scholarship seniors this team has. This team should still have intentions of getting better weekly, going to a bowl game and putting the program back on track. Those things, while all challenging, are still realistic and still, in my opinion, worth being excited about this season.

There is, however, absolutely a building process that has to continue to take place.

A magic 9-3 season probably isn't popping up out of nowhere, particularly with the roster knowledge I opened this column with, but I do suspect things aren't as bad as they feel right now, either.