13 DAYS TO 2025 KICKOFF: Blake Barnett
Position: Quarterback
Previous College: None
Projection: Third-String
Status: On Scholarship
Blake Barnett (b. Dec. 9, 2005) is a talented young 4-star quarterback from Erie High School in Colorado who is majoring in business administration. He enrolled in time for 2024 spring practices at K-State.
Last season, Barnett redshirted and did not play in order to learn the playbook. But there has been a lot of positive commentary about him from the coaches and he could well end this season as the primary backup to Avery Johnson, who had a lot of praise last October for his possible future understudy:
The dude is a competitor, and he works really hard. He doesn't want to lose in anything he does, and that''s a great trait as a quarterback. You can get caught up in all the stats, but at the end of the day, you just want a win in that column, and that''s how he is. He works hard, he''s really smart and he has a really strong arm. He''s really talented. He definitely is going to be a player to watch in the years to come.
'Blake makes plays. He's got to minimize some mistakes, as do all the quarterbacks,' Chris Klieman said in July.
Back in the spring, new offensive coordinator Matt Wells said, 'Blake finally getting in and being healthy showed great improvement.'
You can read more here about how Barnett impressed the coaches last October as he became more healthy, but here's the highlights from Klieman:
Blake Barnett was fun to watch because we missed him during the spring. He missed all of spring football, so for him to truly get an opportunity — he just first learned the offense in fall camp — for him to now run scout team and then play quarterback and do K-State stuff, that was fun for us to see. We saw some really good things out of Blake, but that was fun because we hadn't really had a chance to see that yet.
A four-year letter-winner and two-year team captain at Erie under head coach Jeff Giger, Barnett was rated the top overall player in the state of Colorado for the Class of 2024 by Rivals, while the organization viewed him as the seventh-best dual-threat quarterback in the class.
He also was rated the top overall prospect in the state by On3, in addition to being ranked as the 17th-best dual-threat quarterback in the country by ESPN.
A three-year first-team all-state player by the Colorado High School Activities Association, Barnett also was named Class 4A Player of the Year as a senior after he started all 43 career games and led the Tigers to a 36-7 record, including a state championship as a senior.
He broke the Colorado state record for overall touchdowns with 159, a record that previously was held by current San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey (141).
Barnett threw for 7,518 yards and 88 touchdowns in addition to running for 3,420 yards and another 68 scores during his prep career, when he was a high school teammate of K-State offensive lineman John Pastore, who could be the starting left tackle at some point this year.
He also was a three-year letter-winner in track — winning state championships in the 100-meter dash and 4×200-meter dash — while he was a two-year letter-winner in basketball.
Barnett chose K-State over offers from Colorado, Colorado State, Kansas, Oregon State and Washington, as well as interest from Georgia and Illinois. His primary recruiter was former offensive coordinator Collin Klein.
(P.S. Best wishes for a continued recovery from cancer to Barnett's father, Steve.)
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