Kansas State Football: Wildcats Add Prairie View A&M Graduate DB Reggie Stubblefield.

Wednesday night, Reggie Stubblefield, a 6’0”, 195 pound defensive back, formerly of Prairie View A&M, announced his intentions to transfer to Kansas State for the 2021 season.

In 2019, Stubblefield contributed 32 tackles and 1 interception to the Panther’s cause. As a graduate transfer, he’ll have one year of eligibility in Manhattan (I think, it’s hard to keep track these days).

What He Brings to K-State

He’s a versatile defensive back capable of playing both safety and nickel corner. That’s useful because safety depth is a question and there is a roster hole at nickel corner. Stubblefield can do both, but I think he’ll mostly play nickel corner unless another transfer is added before fall camp or a safety gets nicked up. He’s a graduate transfer, meaning he’s a one year band-aide, but when you’re bleeding at nickel corner, a band-aide is useful.

I went back and looked at the Prairie View vs Southern game from 2019, and understand what the coaching staff sees in him.

Safety Skills

Stubblefield is playing free safety on this play and does a nice job of getting over and erasing any chance the Southern receiver has of making the play. He shows the discipline to keep his head up and make a physical, but legal, hit.

Corner Skills

He’s still playing safety on this play, but he’s sitting in a zone, which translates well to the corner position. He breaks hard on the long throw to the sideline, targets the receivers mid section, and pops the ball out with his helmet. Even if he doesn’t break up the pass, he’s in position to prevent YAC on a third and long.

Another nice play with solid fundamentals.

Tackling

I love this play. He fights off a block, gets low, wraps his arms and executes a form tackle to stop the quarterback dead in his tracks. Drag down tackles by defensive backs hurt my soul. This tackle brought me much joy.

This is another fundamentally sound play. Reggie is tasked with setting the edge and keeping the running back from getting down the sideline. Notice how he continues to work outside while he’s engaged with the receiver. He pushes his blocker outside, disengages, and cuts the back down when he tries to cut inside. It’s not flashy, but it’s a solid play considering how hard the Southern running back was running in this game.

Speaking of which, this play has nothing to do with Stubblefield, but it does show how hard it was to get this running back on the ground. I’m mainly showing it because I think it’s awesome, and we all need a little more awesome in our life.

Note: If you’re in desperate need of a college football fix, I whole-heartedly recommend the Southern vs Prairie View game from 2019. My plan was to skip through looking for Stubblefield highlights, but I spent an hour watching the game because it’s an absolute wild ride.

Overall

I’m impressed with the coaching staffs utilization of the transfer portal to fix the secondary. They’ve managed to snag a player with elite corner traits in Julius Brents and two solid one year grad transfer in Yeast and Stubblefield. These grad transfers, in particular, are all reward, no risk. If it works out, awesome, the team is better in 2021. If it doesn’t, that scholarship was sitting around collecting dust anyway, and nothing changes moving forward.

We’ll have to see how it works out on the field, but on paper, I like all the pick-ups, including Stubblefield.