DENVER — Colorado State (3-3, 2-0) is halfway to bowl eligibility and currently holds sole possession of first place in the Mountain Division after Saturday’s 36-7 victory over New Mexico (2-5, 0-3). 

After disappointingly dropping a pair of home games to open up the 2021 campaign, quite a few people wrote the Green & Gold off completely. So the fact that the Rams have a shot to contend for the postseason, potentially more depending on how CSU fares in its remaining league games, is going to be shocking to the folks that stopped watching after Week 2. 

As the diehards know, though, CSU has improved significantly over the past month. The Rams may not be the flashiest team in the Mountain West but their top talent is as good as anyone’s in the conference. And after a slow start to the year, CSU has now established an identity on both sides of the football, a big reason why the Rams have gone 3-1 over the last four games. They seem to be playing with a chip on their shoulders as well. 

In Saturday’s win over the Lobos the Rams dominated for all 60 minutes. That does not mean it was a perfect performance, as there are multiple things that they are going to need to clean up if Steve Addazio’s squad is going to be a factor in the MW race. But for the second week in a row they established an early lead and then suffocated their opponent down the stretch, which is what good teams do. 

“You know, really as a football team, we played hard and physical today,” Addazio said.

“That’s been a trend that we’ve been on now for a number of weeks. And you know we’re bearing some fruit, these are tough wins. We’re still growing, we’re still building obviously, we’re not there yet by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it was a fairly dominant performance.”

Here are the takeaways from the 11th victory in a row over the UNM Lobos. 

This is the best CSU defense since the Lubick era

It’s a little premature to start defining legacies or anything like that. The way that this defense has played over the last five games is something CSU has been missing for years though. The Green & Gold have a defense that is consistent, disruptive, and stacked with talent. 

Against UNM the defense was brilliant. They held the Lobos to just 69 total yards and kept the opposing offense off the scoreboard. UNM’s only touchdown came on a punt return in the second quarter — which on a side note — is an area that the Rams need to be more consistent. We all saw in the Toledo win that special teams can completely flip a game, so CSU needs to clean up their lanes on punt coverage and not always rely on Ryan Stonehouse to do all the heavy lifting. This game should have been a shutout and it’s somewhat unfortunate that it wasn’t.

The defense, though, they put together a video game-like performance in this one.

As mentioned above, the Rams only allowed 69 total yards of offense, which is the lowest total since 1948. They set a school record by only allowing 1.2 yards per play to boot. The group forced three turnovers and only allowed two third-down conversions all night. It was pure domination. 

What’s particularly encouraging about this showing, aside from the eye-popping stats, is that it was a complete performance from the entire defense as a whole. The front seven has been lights out since Week 2. After a shaky stretch, though, the secondary has come into its own in recent weeks.  

CSU had two interceptions for the second game in a row, this time from the veterans, Marshaun Cameron and Logan Stewart. And the young safeties continue to display a real knack for being around the ball. After Jack Howell stood out against San Jose State, Henry Blackburn was out there laying the wood against UNM and finished second on the team with seven tackles. Tywan Francis had five tackles and Stewart had three. It was just a solid showing from the group. 

Finally, while it’s becoming somewhat predictable, I’d be remiss to not also bring up how much the front seven completely took UNM’s lunch money. They bullied the Lobos all night and had C.J. Montes running for his life. UNM’s run game was completely neutralized too. Honestly, the Lobos’ offensive line didn’t even look like they belonged on the same field as the Rams’ defensive line. When it was all said and done CSU had six sacks and eight tackles for loss. What’s more, five different individuals from the front seven had four or more tackles.

“Nobody has to be Superman on our defense,” Scott Patchan said postgame. “You just have to do your job, your assignment, whatever your keys are giving you, make the play off that.”

The offense remains on the right track

Again, this was not a perfect performance and we’ll dive into the Red Zone inconsistencies momentarily. Let’s begin with the positives though. 

CSU was able to drive up and down the field on the Lobos for most of the night. UNM did make things tough in the run game and create some pressure against Todd Centeio, which is why the score was not even more lopsided than it was. But in terms of total plays run, time of possession, execution on third down, etc. CSU owned every major statistic by a wide margin. 

The Rams valued their possessions and did not commit any turnovers. They were fairly balanced as well with 289 yards through the air and 163 on the ground. All of these components are crucial to being a winning football team.

Would we like to see more points on the board? Absolutely. The silver lining, however, is that we are seeing the unit take steps in the right direction and doing so without Dante Wright in the mix yet. Centeio getting one of his most effective weapons back should only help him in the passing game; an area he’s shown significant progress in over the past two games. 

In total Centeio was 16-of-25 through the air (64 percent). His leading receiver, of course, was Trey McBride who had seven catches for 135 yards. McBride has now gone over the century mark in four of six games played in 2021 and is on pace to be the first Rams tight end to record a 1,000 yard season.

Red Zone inconsistencies could haunt the Rams down the line

Okay, the time for nitpicking has come. 

While the Rams offense has made progress and appears to be much more balanced than it was shaping up to be early in the season, CSU continues to have to settle for field goals after long, imposing drives. It has not really come back to bite the Rams since the Vanderbilt game but counting on Cayden Camper to hit five field goals every week is probably not the most sustainable method. 

“We’re still kicking a lot of field goals and missing some touchdowns,” Addazio said. “I expected a lot of that today against this style of defense, but in the same breath, you know, we want to get more touchdowns and we’ve got to work at that, find out where those issues are.”

According to Addazio, there were some breakdowns offensively in the Red Zone against the Lobos. CSU took a couple of inopportune sacks deep in UNM territory and committed a few too many penalties when they had great chances to score 6, which is why it was a 29 point win instead of a 40+ point win. It didn’t really matter in the end on Saturday, it very well could in a tight game though. 

Moving forward it would be nice to see Trey McBride more looks in scoring territory but obviously defenses are going to frequently double him down there. Personally, I’d like to see the Rams rely on a few more designed quarterback runs. Centeio has been extremely effective on QB keepers, especially in the open field. With how hard he runs, Centeio is a difficult dude to tackle. Give him a few more opportunities inside the 10-yard line to try and use his legs to beat the defense. Those plays take less time than turning around and handing the ball to the running back. Plus, it’ll open up the quick pass game and keep the defense honest.