DENVER — It’s now or never.
Colorado State (1-3) has not had the hot start to the season that you would hope for. Losing a pair of home games to open a campaign is about as suboptimal as it gets. But while their 1-3 record has put them in a hole, it’s not necessarily something they can’t climb out of.
The Rams have shown steady progress in just about every aspect aside from the passing game. Special teams have looked better, the run defense is dominant again, and CSU has at least established an offensive identity with the running game and force-feeding Trey McBride as many targets as he can get.
Injuries will play a role, CSU definitely needs David Bailey (RB) to be effective, and getting Dante Wright (WR) back would be massive for the passing game.
It’s not insane, though, to think that this group should be expected to be relevant in conference play. They’re battle-tested, experienced, and they’ve had to deal with a difficult non-conference slate. That’s not an excuse — you play to win the game and it’s a results business — but it is the truth.
Looking at CSU’s season thus far, they were punched in the teeth early by a South Dakota State (4-0) team that appears to be the best in the FCS. Since beating the Rams 42-23 in Week 1, the Jackrabbits have won their last three by a margin of 151-14. It’s obviously against a lower level of competition but it’s clear they are a dominant group. If they run the table and win a national championship, maybe folks will understand just how good that team is.
The Vanderbilt loss will always be a particularly tough pill to swallow, especially considering the Rams showed they were the better team in about three of four quarters, and basically squandered it away with penalties. But since that low moment, CSU has responded with a quality road win over Toledo, a team one week prior that was close to upsetting Notre Dame in their own building. And then the Rams followed it up by giving a top 5 team a country a legitimate scare.
“We played the No. 5 team in the country and had the lead at halftime. We’ve got to be happy about that, but we didn’t finish the game. We’re still learning how to finish games,” Todd Centeio said earlier this week. “Once we keep knocking on that (door) and keep hitting that rock, as coach would say, we’re going to bear our fruit.”
“I think if you look back to our first game it’s just inconsistency — way up and then way down — coach Addazio talks about it all the time, we’ve got to find a way to be consistent,” Barry Wesley added.
“No, we didn’t get the outcome that we wanted and there’s a couple things in there that really hurt us but I thought it was a good bar to set going into conference play.”
With the way CSU’s schedule is structured, the window for the Rams to give themselves the best chance to right the ship is really over the next three weeks. San Jose State (3-2), New Mexico (2-3), Utah State (3-2) have all been competitive teams. All three are winnable though.
“We’ve improved every week we’ve played,” Centeio said. “We just want to keep that momentum going. Going into conference play we feel like we match up pretty well with all these teams, and now we’re gonna go out there, lay it all out on the line and see what happens.”
“We’re building right now,” Jordan Kress said. “We’re heading towards a championship. I fully believe that. Everybody’s got the right mindset, the right mentality, so it’s exciting to see what’s gonna happen. We’re coming into conference play, we’ve got San Jose State this week, and we just want to be 1-0 every week.”
Winning the first conference championship since 2002 would be a tall task but as of this moment it’s still technically possible. In conference play, how you started the season basically goes out the window. The experiences you had are valuable and obviously winning games puts you in a better position to contend for the postseason. It had no impact on the MW standings though.
Wyoming (4-0) has smoked a bunch of nobodies, Air Force has basically done the same, and Boise State (2-3) very well be 2-4 after losing to Nevada last week and with a trip to BYU (5-0) this weekend. The moral of the story is the Mountain Division is still wide open and the Rams know it. Let’s see what they do.
