K-State coordinator Conor Riley began his coaching journey with unusual career change

Conor Riley didn’t know what to do.

Shortly after he graduated from college and finished his playing days as an offensive lineman at Omaha in 2002 he had an important decision to make. Should he transition to football coaching and become a graduate assistant at his alma mater? Or should he try his luck as an insurance salesman?

Seeing as how Riley is now a handsomely paid offensive coordinator at Kansas State , you might assume that he took that GA job with the Mavericks and never looked back. But you would be wrong. Believe it or not, he chose to sell life insurance for Northwestern Mutual.

“I wanted to step away from football,” Riley says now, “and see what else was out there.”

It sounded like a good idea at the time. But regret hit him immediately. Turns out, he missed football so much that he began scheduling his work calls around Omaha practices so he could watch from the bleachers and take notes, just for fun.

He wanted a do-over. Fortunately, for his sake, fate intervened.

“I reached out to our offensive coordinator at the time and told him I made a terrible mistake in turning down that GA position,” Riley said. “If anything opened up, I said I would be very, very welcome to it and I would be very thrilled to be a part of the team again.

“After they played their first game, he responded and said the young man that they hired instead of me wasn’t working out. Then he asked if I could start at noon. I’ve been coaching ever since.”

More than a ground-and-pound offense

Riley chuckles as he tells that story inside his swanky office on the north end of Bill Snyder Family Stadium, which overlooks the K-State football field and provides his family with a first-class viewing experience on game days.

He can’t imagine himself working any other job.

That makes sense, because Riley is the epitome of everything you want in an offensive line coach . Not only did he used to play the position as a guard, but he is also a hard worker who cares deeply about his players. He is personable and funny. He loves to talk and watch baseball and play golf. He brings energy to the field. And, perhaps best of all, he knows how to unite a group of five blockers and turn them into a cohesive unit.

For those reasons, K-State head coach Chris Klieman describes Riley as “the best offensive line coach in the country.”

But is he ready to move up to the press box and call plays as a coordinator?

That is a question that many K-State fans have pondered since Collin Klein left for Texas A&M and Riley was chosen as his replacement.

After all, it’s not often that an offensive line coach gets promoted to coordinator. Fair or not, there is a belief that Riley will lean almost exclusively on the run because of his background in the trenches. He is aware of this and likes to have some fun with it. During this interview, he joked that K-State spent part of spring practices installing the triple option.

“We will use that on third-and-long,” he said with a laugh.

Will the Wildcats run the ball? Yes, it would be crazy not to with D.J. Giddens and Dylan Edwards in the backfield. But Riley is hoping to give the offense a more balanced approach that will keep defenses off balance.

That means a new approach to throwing the ball.

“People think we’re going to just pound it, pound it, pound it because I didn’t take the traditional path here,” Riley said. “It’s an interesting thing because I have had coordinators for years assume I like to run it. Well, not if the safeties are at six yards and we don’t have numbers in the run game.

“There are other ways to take advantage of that, whether it be with play-action pass or RPO and exposing defenses on a different level. We still need to run the football in order to be successful, but we can be more efficient in some of the passing game by taking easy opportunities and getting the ball to our playmakers so we can be more explosive.”

Riley also wants to simplify the K-State passing attack.

For years, he has been frustrated by a lack of diversity from the K-State receiving corps. He thinks the Wildcats have lots of talent behind top targets Jayce Brown and Keagan Johnson. He’s tired of hearing about how those reserves may struggle to line up correctly or run a precise route on a complicated play.

If a K-State receiver is a touchdown threat, Riley wants to get the ball in his hands.

“We think we have a way to simplify things and find different ways to get our dynamic players involved in the game plan,” Riley said. “There are some mechanisms within our offense that are going to allow for that to happen.”

Knowing is better than guessing

For now, it’s impossible to know exactly what K-State will look like on offense this season. But fans got a sneak peek last year when Riley called plays as interim coordinator at the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

The Wildcats defeated North Carolina State 28-19 last December thanks to 435 yards of total offense. Quarterback Avery Johnson turned in an MVP performance by passing for 178 yards and two touchdowns while also rushing for 71 yards and a score.

Running back DJ Giddens was just as good. He had 151 yards and a touchdown rushing to go along with a 37-yard touchdown reception.

He remembers that receiving touchdown most of all. It happened on a fourth-and-5 at the NC State 37 in the first quarter, so the Wildcats could ill afford a mistake. There was risk involved, but it didn’t feel that way to Giddens.

“We knew what was going to happen,” Giddens said. “We ran that play something like 100 times during practice. We knew how their defense was going to line up and how many people they were going to bring. Avery saw it, made a check and I was wide open.”

Indeed, Giddens slipped behind the defense for an easy catch-and-run touchdown that set the tone for the rest of the game.

“We went into that game knowing, not guessing,” Giddens said. “We did a lot of preparation based on the defenses that we saw from them on film. Then we stuck to the script and things worked out nice.”

Johnson, a sophomore quarterback, also likes what he has seen from his new coordinator.

“He has expanded our playbook,” Johnson said. “We’re still going run the ball at a high level. He wants to throw it at a high level, as well. We have a lot of good pieces to be able to execute that. Our offense can be really explosive in the fall.”

Happy to be here

Afterward, K-State players were ecstatic for Riley.

His offensive linemen, many of whom were seniors with NFL futures, took a group photo with him on the field, and Johnson gave him a hug. Later, Riley was promoted to offensive coordinator and the congratulatory texts started rolling in.

Many of his top linemen, such as Cooper Beebe, were under no obligation to play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. No one would have been upset with them had they decided to “opt out” of the postseason. But they wanted to play one last game for Riley.

It seemed like the entire roster wanted to help Riley have a good audition.

“You can tell how much he cares about the offense as a whole,” Johnson said. “He ends every meeting by telling us how much he cares about us and how grateful he is to be in front of us and be our offensive coordinator. A lot of guys would not say that.”

Klieman noticed that Riley had a strong connection with his players when they first linked up at North Dakota State in 2013. That is one of the reasons why Klieman insisted on bringing Riley with him to K-State.

Unfortunately, that loyalty ended up hurting one of K-State’s outgoing seniors on the offensive line (Riley declined to name him) at the Pop-Tarts Bowl. The player suffered a significant thumb injury in the first half of the game and ended up needing surgery. That delayed his training schedule for the NFL Draft.

Riley felt sick to his stomach when he heard the news and sent a message to the player expressing how sorry he was about the situation.

But he smiled when he read the reply: I had a hell of a time, we won the game and you got promoted to OC. So it was worth every damn minute of it.

“That was a really good testament to the support I had from those players,” Riley said. “They knew it’s been a goal of mine to be a play-caller and to be a coordinator. The support they showed when I was the interim coordinator and the excitement they had after I got the full-time job were both just awesome.”

Moments like that fuel Riley as he adjusts to life as an offensive coordinator.

They also remind him how lucky he is to be a football coach instead of an insurance salesman.