Coming off of Saturday’s 51-7 loss to Michigan, head coach Jay Norvell is looking forward to the opportunity to correct the mistakes that hurt the Rams in Week 1. 

As the first-year CSU coach explained, there were opportunities for his team to capitalize more on both sides of the football last week, but the overall level of execution was just not high enough against a team as good as the Wolverines. 

For example, Norvell spotlighted Wolverines wide receiver Roman Wilson taking a screen pass 61 yards to the house for Michigan’s first score of the day, and how it was the type of play where someone needed to step up and make a tackle. You simply cannot allow an opposing offense to score on a situation that is so effortless for the quarterback, Norvell said. 

Norvell also got into how his redshirt freshman quarterback needs to help out the offensive line and get rid of the ball quicker on the plays where it is designed to do so. He explained that it’s easy to throw the offensive line under the bus on a day where they allowed seven sacks, the thing is that they were not always at fault. There were plays called to try and counter Michigan’s disruptive front by getting the ball out fast, but at times Millen was looking to try and do too much down the field.

“It’s a learning experience and our team will be better for it,” Norvell said. 

Fortunately, Norvell said a lot of what went wrong for CSU in the first game of the season is correctable, and is not a sign of what this team will look like all year, especially if his players continue to practice with the same focus and intensity that they have in the early stages of the 2022 campaign. 

According to both Norvell and the players, the Rams were locked in during Monday morning and are eager to hit the field on Saturday in front of the home fans. 

“Overall I’m really encouraged that this is an opportunity to come home and show the fans how hard we’ve been working, and really start our home season out with a bang,” Norvell said. 

Here’s everything else we learned in Monday’s press conference. 

Norvell wants to set the tone at home

Jay Norvell made it clear that he wants Canvas Stadium to be a feared destination for opposing teams and a place of excitement for CSU supporters. 

“We want to really play with tremendous pride and energy,” Norvell said.

Similarly to his introductory press conference in December, 2021, Norvell went into how his goal is to play a specific brand of football — an aggressive, entertaining style that is both fun to play and fun to watch. 

“We like to spread the ball around to all of our play-makers on offense. And we like to play an entertaining style of football,” Norvell said. “To do that, it takes execution. But we want our fans to come and be entertained.”

Norvell continued, saying that he wants the fans to be able to look forward to coming to campus every Saturday. He emphasized that with their offense, you never really know what you are going to see on any given game, and that their versatility is a strength. It takes proper execution to be able to show it — as the year goes on though and the team gets more time together — Norvell feels the fans will get to see firsthand exactly how explosive the Air Raid can be. 

Responding through adversity

In addition to wanting to play well in their home building, Norvell has always taken great pride in being able to respond after a tough loss, so he wants to see that from his players this weekend as well.

“It’s hard to win, and after you lose, you have a certain hunger to play again.”

Obviously Norvell just got here, but the Rams have lost seven consecutive games overall and five of the last six home games going back to 2021. Ram fans would certainly love to see more resolve from their team this season. It will be interesting to see how they respond. 

Wants to see a big jump in execution

As we talked about in the beginning, ultimately the Rams simply need to execute better if they hope to come out on the winning end. 

The most challenging aspect of football is that while you can have talent at multiple, even all of the positions, if the timing is off or the spacing isn’t correct though, the results are not going to be pretty. 

The 2022 Rams clearly have talent. But like Norvell said on Monday, there is no shortcut to getting to where this team needs to be. They’ve got to continue getting in reps daily and refine the little things that allow you to succeed on game day. 

“We value practice here, it’s the most important time that we get to be together on the field and working on our craft,” Norvell said. 

While practice is certainly valuable and it’s encouraging to see the players taking it seriously, when the chance to execute and make a play presents itself in the game, the guys need to step up and do so. 

CSU had opportunities last weekend to create turnovers, move the sticks, etc, Norvell wants his team to take better advantage of those chances. We’ll see if they can against Middle Tennessee State on Saturday.