Goal No. 7: GREAT EFFORT.

#7 Adryan Lara

Redshirt Freshman | 6-0 | 219 lbs. | Goodyear, Arizona

Courtesy Kansas State Athletics

• Position: Quarterback
• Previous College: None
• Projection: Third-String
• Status: On Scholarship

Adryan Lara (b. Nov. 16, 2003) is a rocket-arm quarterback from Desert Edge High School in Goodyear, Arizona, who redshirted in 2022 and is majoring in business administration.

A February signee in the 2021 class, Lara prepped under head coach Marcus Carter at Desert Edge, where he was viewed as the 26th-best quarterback in the Class of 2022 by Rivals, while ESPN rated him the sixth-best overall prospect in the state of Arizona.

He threw for 10,652 yards and 117 touchdowns during his four-year career on 715-of-114 aim (62.5 percent), while rushing for 289 yards and six scores, as he made a serious run at Oklahoma/South Carolina quarterback Spencer Rattler’s career passing yards state record.

Lara’s best season for the Scorpions was his sophomore campaign when he threw for 4,016 yards and 41 touchdowns, while he finished his senior season with 2,758 yards and 33 touchdowns. A two-time first-team all-state selection, he also competed in track and field.

Lara selected K-State over offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Fresno State, Iowa State, Kansas, Oregon State, William & Mary, and Washington State, which he originally committed to but later decommitted from after former coach Nick Rolovich was fired.

His primary recruiter was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Collin Klein, who had this to say about Lara during spring camp:

Adryan Lara, now going into his second year in the program, he’s got tremendous arm talent. The field gets incredibly small when he’s back there. He can spread it around with attachments, with downfield passing game and do so from any platform at any time. His core strength is outstanding, and he’s a very natural passer. He’s still trying to get comfortable with the offense and what’s going on around him, but he’s done a great job and made extreme improvement from even the middle of last fall to now. He’s done a great job.

And here’s what head coach Chris Klieman had to say about this talented signal caller:

The guy that’s really helping us right now is Adryan Lara on scout team. That kid spins it around really, really well, with a lot of different wideouts that we use, and Adryan is really challenging us and it’s going to make us better when we do some spread sets because Adryan can look guys off and put the ball into tight, tight windows.

Tremendous arm strength, really talented quarterback, can throw from all platforms. We were looking for a guy that could really sling it from sideline to sideline and throw vertical balls and have great touch and great arm strength. Excited about him. His dad’s one of the coaches there, so he’s a coach’s kid. He just knows about the game, so we’re excited about him. ... We’ll find out because he’s a young kid, but just watching him throw the football, you guys will like it because he’s got a cannon for an arm. He’s a good athlete. He’s a 200-plus-pound guy, already 205, 208, somewhere in there. He played an offense that allowed him to throw it around a lot, allowed him to have some freedom of changing some protections, changing some route concepts. He gets the game because of his dad.

Klieman explained that he wants to bring in a new quarterback every year, just to be safe:

Just his arm talent alone, I think, is going to really help us at that position, so he’ll be a guy that gets an opportunity to compete with the other young guys in the program. Each year ... we want to bring in a young quarterback. It’s just something that we want to do. ... We wanted to make sure that we continue to bring in freshmen.