How Chris Klieman built one of the nation’s most underrated QB pipelines to the NFL

Carson Wentz is tired. He is hot and sweaty, too. A long week of training camp has just come to an end with the Kansas City Chiefs, and their backup quarterback is looking forward to getting out of the sun and taking some days off.

But before he heads to the locker room and changes out of his football gear on a sultry summer day on the campus of Missouri Western, a stranger introduces himself and says he would like to chat about the man who previously coached him in college and set him on a path for the NFL — Chris Klieman.

Wentz smiles. Just like that, he’s no longer in a rush to leave.

“Coach Klieman and I have an awesome relationship,” Wentz said. “He is a guy that I respect not just as a football coach, but as a family man. He is a guy I really got close with, even though he coached the other side of the ball. He helped me understand defenses and concepts and different coverages that I had no idea about at the time. Our years together were super and I can’t say enough good things about how he helped me, how he led our program and what he’s doing now.”

Wentz is far from the only NFL quarterback who thinks highly of Klieman.

The college coach has quietly sent an impressive number of passers to the next level since he became the head man at North Dakota State and then moved up to his current gig at Kansas State.

A quick rundown:

• Carson Wentz — No. 2 pick in 2016, now backs up Patrick Mahomes for the Chiefs.
• Easton Stick — Fifth-round pick in 2019, now backs up Justin Herbert for the Chargers .
• Trey Lance - No. 3 pick in 2021, now backs up Dak Prescott for the Cowboys.
• Skylar Thompson — Seventh round pick in 2022, now plays for the Dolphins.
• Adrian Martinez — Named MVP of the UFL last season, now plays for the Jets .

Even though he isn’t in the NFL yet, it’s also worth noting that K-State transfer Will Howard is the presumptive starting quarterback at Ohio State, a team that is ranked No. 2 in the preseason coaches poll. And some think current K-State QB Avery Johnson could wind up being the best of this entire group.

The facts speak for themselves. Klieman is a quarterback guru.

Unconventional coaching background

Klieman only needs one word to describe the recent run of success he has found with talented quarterbacks.

Huge.

Since Klieman became a head coach in 2014 he has guided North Dakota State to four FCS championships and K-State to four bowl games in addition to one Big 12 championship. Nobody can sustain that kind of success without stellar play at quarterback, and that is exactly what both the Bison and Wildcats have enjoyed.

“It means that we are identifying the right guys in the recruiting process,” Klieman said, “and more importantly that we are developing those guys to have a skill set to play at the next level. It means a lot, to me especially. I’m a defensive-minded coach, but I spend a lot of time with the quarterbacks.”

When you think of the world’s best quarterback whisperers your mind goes first to QB coaches and offensive coordinators. If not them, then former players and personal coaches who once threw touchdown passes themselves.

Klieman is none of those things. He grew up playing on the other side of the ball and lined up as a defensive back for Northern Iowa. Then he coached that position and coordinated defenses. He is not the type of person you would expect to mold a bunch of promising young quarterbacks into professionals.

So how has he done it?

Klieman isn’t afraid to share his secret.

“I go out of my way to spend time with the QBs just to talk defensive football with them,” Klieman said. “I don’t know if that gets done enough across the board on a daily basis and weekly basis. I want to give those guys more feedback from a defensive perspective, whether it’s fronts or coverages or blitz disguise. I want my quarterbacks to learn as much as possible, not just at the QB position but about how offenses and defenses work.”

Turning defense into offense

Many of Klieman’s former quarterbacks are eager to share the most eye-opening lessons they learned from their head coach.

For example, Wentz arrived at North Dakota State thinking he could read defenses like a crafty veteran. But when Klieman sat him down and pointed out every little thing that cornerbacks and safeties were trying to accomplish on certain plays, he realized just how little he actually knew about the game.

“It feels like a lifetime ago, but I do remember some of the X’s and O’s details,” Wentz said. “To have somebody, especially at the college level, who knew every defense under the sun and who was very smart, very sharp helping me with small details within coverage was huge. It’s second nature for me now, but at the time it was graduate-level stuff. He really helped me understand play concepts and how a defense could attack me.”

Adrian Martinez, who only spent one season playing under Klieman after he transferred to K-State from Nebraska, also learned how to attack defenses in a new way.

Klieman filled his head with so many pointers that one of them played a big role during his unforgettable game against Oklahoma in 2022. Martinez threw for 234 yards and a touchdown that day, but he also rushed for 148 yards and four touchdowns.

His biggest play of all came late in the fourth quarter with K-State protecting a touchdown lead. The Wildcats faced a third-and-long at their own 41-yard line. They needed 16 yards to pick up a first down and keep the ball away from Oklahoma. Punting in that situation could have easily led to a loss. But Martinez made sure that didn’t happen when he scrambled for 55 yards to clinch the game.

On that play, K-State sent most of its receivers on vertical routes. The plan was for Martinez to throw if any of them got open immediately. But if they were covered and Oklahoma was playing man defense, Martinez had the green light to run.

He realized running was his best option when he saw a specific OU defender line up in the secondary. K-State coaches had told him that if that defender was on the field it meant the Sooners were almost certain to play man defense.

The rest is history.

Martinez still makes sure to look for those clues in the NFL.

“All the reasons why I wanted to wear purple when I first got here, I would say, have helped me on the other side,” Martinez said.

Next in line

K-State’s current starting quarterback can also attest to the knowledge Klieman brings to a room.

Avery Johnson said his high school coaches at Maize didn’t teach him anything about coverages beyond simply identifying zone and man. It was Klieman who showed him the intricacies of a defensive formation, as if he was a college professor teaching advanced physics to a freshman.

“The biggest thing he taught me about was how to identify things pre-snap,” Johnson. “There are a lot of things I would never have looked at, like the stance of a defender or if his left foot is forward or how his hips might turn. Coach Klieman could tell me what a defender was going to do based purely on those things.

“At first, I was like, ‘What are you talking about? That guy is just standing there? You can’t tell anything from that.’ But the more you watch and learn you realize he is right. Sometimes you get so caught up in offense, offense, offense that it can help to take a step back and put yourself in the defense’s shoes. He does a great job at that.”

With that in mind, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Johnson completed 37 of 66 passes for 479 yards and five touchdowns without throwing a single interception last season.

He knew what he was going up against better than your average freshman.

The opposite of tough love

Anyone who watched Skylar Thompson play as a sophomore could tell he was low on confidence.

Even though he had some nice moments and closed out the 2018 season as the team’s starting quarterback, he was constantly looking over his shoulder in fear that someone else was about to take his job.

But that changed when K-State hired Klieman.

Few coaches speak more positively about their quarterbacks than Klieman. He told Wentz he was a future NFL player when North Dakota State couldn’t figure out how to tackle him on the scout team as a freshman. Later, he called Stick the best quarterback in the country in 2018 even though Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa finished first and second in Heisman voting.

Now it was Klieman’s turn to show the same kind of confidence in Thompson, and good results followed.

The more Klieman believed in Thompson the better the got. He turned into one of the best quarterbacks in the Big 12, throwing for 2,315 yards and 12 touchdowns while leading K-State to eight wins as a junior. He chose to stick around for two more years and guided the Wildcats to a 42-20 victory over LSU at the Texas Bowl in his final college game.

Some coaches win with tough love. Klieman prefers the opposite approach, at least when it comes to his quarterbacks.

“You have to believe in these kids,” Klieman said. “These guys all put in the work and they were so competitive. They left no stone unturned. I wouldn’t say those things if they didn’t. I think believing in your signal-caller is a huge thing, and we’ve had really good ones that we believed in.”

Pass it on

By now, a brotherhood exists among all of Klieman’s most successful quarterbacks.

That has helped many of them get to where they are today.

Wentz took Stick under his wing when he arrived at North Dakota State and did everything he could to set him up for success, including lessons on how to improve his diet and speak with media members. Stick even lived in Wentz’s basement for a short time. They remain close friends; Stick was a member of Wentz’s wedding party.

After that first baton was passed, Stick sent his knowledge down to Lance. And even though they were never teammates, both Wentz and Stick reached out to Thompson and offered him help over the phone when Klieman arrived in Manhattan.

That set the tone for Thompson to tutor Howard and for Johnson to learn from his predecessors.

“That is just how everyone at North Dakota State does it,” Wentz said. “It came natural for us. I became instant friends with Easton. We connected on and off the field. That is probably why we had so much sustained success, because of the leadership and knowledge that we kept passing on.”

Klieman’s quarterbacks admire each other so much that Howard committed to K-State because Wentz was his favorite NFL player.

Johnson picked K-State over Oregon and Washington because he admired the track record that Klieman had with quarterbacks.

Others are likely to follow.

If you can start for Klieman, chances are good you’ll make it to the NFL.