Colorado State leaves Week 1 with more questions than answers

Lucie pulled the football away once again on Saturday night, and Charlie Brown, just as he did last year and the year before that, fell flat on his face for all to see. 

There were high hopes for Colorado State going into Week 1. With a retooled offensive line, significant returning talent at multiple key positions, and a roster that from top to bottom is better suited to play this staff’s brand of football, the hope was that this team could match up well with Washington State. 

Unfortunately, for Ram Nation, just like last season when the Cougars dominated from start to finish, the Pac-12 school came into Fort Collins and pretty much had their way with the Green & Gold in the 2023 season opener (50-24). 

Wazzu was able to move the ball on the Rams all night long, which is alarming considering that defense is projected to be the strength of the team. And while CSU did manage to finally score 20 points for the first time of the Air Raid era, a small silver lining in an otherwise brutal experience, nearly all of the offensive production came once the game was already out of hand. 

“We didn’t do enough offensively to help our defense against a good offense. And we certainly didn’t play our best defensively either to slow them down,” Jay Norvell said postgame. 

The Rams trailed 17-3 at halftime, and all things considered, that was really not that bad of a spot to be in. After CSU mounted a 12-play, 55-yard drive that ended with a 38-yard field goal on its opening series, the home team managed to get off just 16 plays for 32 yards over the next five first-half possessions. 

Had the Rams come away with points to open up the third quarter, the game could have been right there for the taking — even after the slow start. Instead the Rams went three-and-out though. And on the ensuing Washington State drive, the Cougars went straight down the field with a six-play, 70-yard scoring drive that took less than 3 minutes. 

“I did not like the way we didn’t respond in the third quarter,” Norvell said. “That was disappointing.”

Norvell continued, praising sophomore quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, who came into the game late in the third quarter after Clay Millen was injured while trying to stretch the field with Tory Horton. 

“I thought Brayden came in and did some good things,” Norvell said. “Clay kind of got dinged up a little bit. And I really didn’t like the look in his eye. So we let Brayden play and I thought he did a really good job when he came in there.”

Millen finished 15-of-24 for 110 yards with zero touchdowns and one interception in close to three quarters of football. Fowler-Nicolosi, in a little over a quarter of action, was 13-of-20 for 210 yards with a pair of touchdown passes and one interception. 

Moving forward it will be interesting to see how short of a leash the staff has with the quarterback position. Norvell made it clear that he felt the turnovers were really poor decisions from his guys. And although there were plenty of other mistakes, like blown coverages, dropped passes, etc., the coaches know there are too many talented football players on this roster to get embarrassed at home like that. Fair or not, a lot of that pressure falls on the quarterback to make things happen. 

“I think we’re capable of playing better,” Norvell said. “I really do. I think we have better players and I’ve got to do a better job with them. That’s the bottom line.” 

Outside of the outcome itself, one of the most frustrating aspects of the loss was the seemingly conservative offensive approach for the majority of the night, even despite getting better offensive line play than they did a year ago. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still plenty of room for improvement in the trenches. The Rams didn’t run the ball very well. And there were still moments of weakness in pass protection. It was far from the disaster we witnessed last September though. 

I asked Norvell about opening up the offense and mentioned that the pass attempt Millen was injured on late in the third quarter was actually the first time he was trying to throw a ball 20+ yards downfield. For a vertical passing offense, that seems odd, especially when you have wide receivers like Tory Horton and Justus Ross-Simmons. Here’s what the second-year Rams coach had to say:

“I think we had some opportunities to open up the offense and we didn’t execute. That’s my job to get them to that point. And, you know, I thought Brayden did a good job of opening up the offense. So we’ll just look at that. And you know, he’s a guy that’s practiced well. We’ll see how Clay’s feeling. We don’t play this week, so he should have time to heal up. We’ll take a look at that and evaluate it.”

Now, obviously it’s early in the season, so we don’t want to blow anything out of proportion. But reading between the lines it’s pretty clear that Norvell wants to see more consistency and explosiveness from an offensive unit that has as much talent at the skill positions as any team in the Mountain West. 

The next couple of weeks could get really interesting. We’ll see how this group responds.