Boise State. Wyoming. Nevada. Utah State. Air Force. Colorado. Arkansas. Toledo. Utah State. San Diego State.
Ten teams. Ten games. Ten Football Bowl Series (FBS) opponents.
Zero Ram victories.
The year – 2018. The month – October. The date – Saturday, the 13th. The location – Canvas Stadium. The opponent – the lowly University of New Mexico. The result – a tight 20-18 CSU victory. That game is the last time that the Colorado State University vanquished an FBS foe. It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times.
When Jim McElwain hopped on that private jet to Gainesville, he walked away from the 2014 season with a 10-2 regular season record and a program on the rise. Mike Bobo walked into a dream situation, immediately improved our recruiting rankings, and coached players onto NFL rosters. But the program has regressed overall. The team lacks discipline and the offense and defense can never align their good performances. As much as I like Bobo (he comes across as a genuinely good dude), I am starting to believe that this is the final season under his control.
This weekend was another brick in our wall of frustration.
We left the game early in the fourth quarter. Shout out to ESPN for the late kick time. Shout out to my kids for taking naps on the way up so we could make it that long. The game was still underway as we cruised down I-25 and I flipped the radio to listen to Brian Roth call the rest of the game. It did not take long for me to realize that listening to the game was not bringing me joy, so I switched it back to the XM radio. The first song that was playing?
You are correct - Nick, Joe, and Kevin. I am a sucker. A sucker that keeps coming back for more crappy football.
The positives:
- My record predicting games (5-1!!).
- For the second week in a row, the defense played well enough to win the game. The Ram defense limited the Aztecs to a total of 238 yards of offense, including less than 100 yards rushing. On third down, the Aztecs were a putrid 3 of 14. THAT SHOULD BE GOOD ENOUGH TO WIN.
- After several games of offensive struggles, Bobo finally tried something different. Unfortunately, I will be covering this more in depth in the next section.
- I'm running out of things to put in this section.
- Traffic going southbound from Fort Collins to Arvada is free-flowing and light at 11:30 on a Saturday night.
The negatives:
- The entire offensive performance. For the second straight game, the defense played at a level where a win should be expected yet the offense prohibited that from happening.
- CSU ended the night with 18 rushing yards on 25 attempts. Hold on while I do some quick math... that works out to approximately 0.7 yards per attempt. One more quick calc... yeah, that's bad. As Robert and I discussed at the game, the quarterback play is partially to blame for the rushing ineptitude. Clearly, teams do not worry about the passing threat of Patrick O'Brien and the defense compresses toward the line of scrimmage. This compacted defensive alignment clogs running lanes and makes blocking for offensive linemen, tight ends, and full backs that much harder. Some sort of downfield threat needs to be established to keep the linebackers and secondary from creeping.
- This is becoming repetitive, but the turnovers need to stop. Despite the solid defensive effort, they were unable to create any turnovers while the offense gave the ball away four times. Another round of quick calculations... that is a 4:0 turnovers made to turnovers created ratio. More calcs... this is also not good.
- Two of those interceptions came in back-to-back passing attempts from Justice McCoy, who Bobo inserted into the game late in the third quarter in an attempt to generate something out of his offensive unit. While I appreciate that Bobo heard our pleas to try something different with the offense, I do not appreciate the effort by McCoy to make us look stupid.
- In the middle of the second quarter, CSU received a punt down 10-3. Dante Wright gathered the ball and ran backwards. A personal foul penalty was assessed during the play and the Rams started at their own 3 yard line. A few plays later, the Rams had marched all the way down the field and had 1st and goal at the 5 yard line. The first down play was a 4 yard Marvin Kinsey run. Second and goal at the one. Marvin Kinsey run up the middle for no gain. Third and goal at the one. Marcus McElroy run up the middle for no gain. Fourth and goal at the one. Marcus McElroy run up the middle for a loss of one. Turnover on downs. Awesome.
- My faith in this team going forward.
Up Next - Week 7
At the beginning of the season, I predicted the Rams would win a road game in Albuquerque in October. I still believe this is possible, not because of my trust in the Rams to win a game but because of New Mexico's ability to actually be worse than CSU.
Shall we be positive for a moment? We shall. The crew of people on the Rams Creative team are so freaking talented. The graphics and videos that come out of that group are amazing.
Shall we be positive for a moment? We shall. The crew of people on the Rams Creative team are so freaking talented. The graphics and videos that come out of that group are amazing.
💡 𝙁𝙍𝙄𝘿𝘼𝙔 𝙉𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏 𝙇𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏𝙎 💡— Colorado State Football (@CSUFootball) October 8, 2019
Headed to Albuquerque on Friday for a showdown with the Lobos!
📍 Albuquerque, N.M.
⏰ Friday, 6 p.m. MT
📺 CBS Sports Network pic.twitter.com/zqZyCm2Jk4
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