Dylan Edwards injury update: Kansas State RB out for Week 1, 'doubtful' for Week 2

The Kansas State Wildcats quickly lost star running back Dylan Edwards during their Week 0 game in Ireland. Now, with a quick turnaround to Week 1, the Wildcats got some bad news. On3’s Pete Nakos confirmed he’s out for their Week 2 game and, reportedly, he is doubtful to be ready for their third game in Week 2 as well.

Kansas State is scheduled to play North Dakota, a strong FCS program, in Week 1. After that, an Army team coming off a 12-2 season is going to travel to Manhattan in Week 2.

Edwards was injured returning a punt in Week 0 against Iowa State. After Kansas State got a stop on the first drive of the game, Edwards was returning the punt from inside the 20-yard line. There, with poor weather conditions and a haze from pregame fireworks, he muffed the punt and took a hard hit, which knocked him out of the game. At the time, it was an apparent ankle injury.

On Monday, Kansas State head coach Chris Kleiman did have some good news about the injury. X-rays were negative. At the time, they were waiting to see how he responded in practice, but clearly, things didn’t go as they had hoped.

“I don’t know,” Klieman said. “I know the X-Ray came back negative, so that was a positive thing. But we won’t know much because we don’t practice until Tuesday. So the treatments don’t even start until this afternoon and we were gonna do nothing with the kids this morning. So they don’t even have treatments until this afternoon with us not practicing until tomorrow. I think we’ll probably have a better idea maybe on Wednesday.”

It’s now Wednesday and we know that Dylan Edwards won’t be able to go on Saturday. That’s a big blow as the expectation was that he would take over as Kansas State’s primary running back after DJ Giddens moved onto the NFL. Now, the Wildcats are already needing to lean on that running back depth. Against Iowa State, that was mostly Joe Jackson. He led the team in rushing with 51 yards on the day against Iowa State.

Dylan Edwards was a four-star recruit in the Class of 2023. He was the 181st-ranked player nationally and the 11th-ranked running back in that recruiting cycle. Initially, Edwards went to Colorado before transferring to Kansas State ahead of the 2024 season. Last year, he’d rush for 546 yards and five touchdowns while also totaling 133 receiving yards and two touchdowns in the passing game.

Kansas State is now 0-1 overall and 0-1 in Big 12 play after opening with the loss to Iowa State. So, the Wildcats do need to bounce back quickly to avoid a very poor start to the season.