Goal No. 3: UNITY.Come together as never before.

#3 Blake Barnett

Redshirt Sophomore* | 6-1 | 218 lbs. (+3) | Erie, Colorado

• Position: Quarterback
• Projection: Co-Second-String
• Remaining Eligibility: 3 years
• 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.

In 2024, Barnett redshirted* and did not see any game action in order to learn the playbook. But after a lot of positive commentary about him from the coaches, he ended the 2025 season as the primary backup to Avery Johnson, who had a lot of praise in 2024 for his 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,” former head coach Chris Klieman said in July 2025. That spring, former 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 in October 2024 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.

Turns out his best role in 2025 was not as the backup quarterback, but rather as a Wildcat gadget runner.

Barnett played in four games in which he was utilized as a running quarterback, rushing 14 times for 40 total yards across the UCF, Baylor, Oklahoma State and Colorado games.

He had a season-high 23 rushing yards on five carries against the Knights — including a season long of 11 yards — while he had 13 yards on four rushes against the Buffaloes.

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 current K-State offensive lineman John Pastore, our seemingly perpetually injured left tackle.

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, unsurprisingly, was new head coach Collin Klein, who had quite a bit of praise to say about Barnett at the start of fall camp — but also a word of caution:

You look at Blake Barnett — some of his flash plays are really, really exciting. Obviously, very, very athletic; really, really good twitch; good tools and can really push the ball down the field; and he has created some explosive plays through the course of camp pushing the ball down the field. Then, again, the consistency factor, he’s still growing into that.

Inconsistency could be what holds Barnett back this season or allows Dillon Duff to pass him as primary backup.

“Blake Barnett and Dillon Duff, those suckers are competitive and they compete every single rep,” said new quarterbacks coach Christian Ellsworth back in February.

“We’re in the middle of our conditioning phase and it’s been great to see those guys jump to the front of the line. Avery (Johnson) is pretty fast, but those other guys aren’t afraid of the competition and want to jump in, and compete and push him to his limits. It’s been great to watch. They’re going to be in a battle.”

(P.S. Best wishes for a continued recovery from cancer to Barnett’s father, Steve.)

*K-State has recently announced a new classification scheme that designates players by their year of eligibility regardless of whether they have “redshirted,” a term that will go out of use with the new “5-for-5” rule. Thus, the KSU SID lists Barnett as a true junior even though he did not play in 2024 and barely played in 2025. For the sake of consistency with past posts, I will continue to designate redshirts based on their playing history, but also note their remaining eligibility to stay consistent with the new designations as well.