FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Friday night was brutal for Colorado State. The Rams got dominated by an FCS opponent at home, sending the 35,000+ fans home disappointed and dejected — a familiar feeling in Ram Country these days. 

Here are three takeaways from the 42-23 loss to South Dakota State. 

Offensive line must improve 

While Steve Addazio’s teams have never been known for having sexy offenses, the one thing they’ve been respected for in the past is having quality play in the trenches. Unfortunately, so far that hasn’t been the case in his CSU tenure. In the five games we’ve seen between last fall and Friday night, CSU’s offensive line has not been able to put together a complete performance as a unit yet. What’s worse, they were pretty much overwhelmed against South Dakota State. 

The Rams ran the ball 40 times against the Jackrabbits for a team total of 124 yards (3.1 yards per carry). Aside from Marcus McElroy who finished with a team-high average of 17.5 yards per carry after taking advantage of a pair of garbage time touches, CSU’s rushing attack never really displayed any time of explosiveness, and a big reason why was that the Rams were not able to beat SDSU in the trenches. Play after play the Jackrabbits were able to blow up the Rams, especially as they continually stacked the box down the stretch. 

If CSU is going to have any success at all as an offense this year they are going to have to run the ball much better than they did against SDSU. It all starts in the trenches though. If the Rams can win the line and even get some blocks at the next level, David Bailey does have the talent to break off big runs. He did it pretty frequently for Boston College. He flashed some of that big play capability in a quiet night against SDSU as well, finishing the night with a couple of touchdowns and a few other runs where he was able to break some tackles. 

Simply stated, the big boys gotta get it done.

Dante Wright is as important as ever 

Whether the fans like it or not, the foundation of the offense is based around running the ball with success and taking shots over the top when the defense starts to close in. Offensive coordinator Jon Budmayr tried to open up things with a couple of deep attempts to Dante Wright early in Friday night’s loss to SDSU. They were perfectly timed calls too, as Wright had a chance to score on both deep shots down the field. Todd Centeio (QB) just unfortunately couldn’t get the ball to him, so all they ended up being were incomplete passes and missed opportunities. 

Following the loss both Addazio and Trey McBride brought up how crucial the missed chances to stretch the field and score were for CSU. “We, early, figured out real quick what they were doing and tried to take our shots down the field. Early in that game, we had a wide open shot, we missed that,” Addazio said. 

“Early on, Todd missed Dante twice on two touchdown plays,” McBride added. “It’s unfortunate. We’ve got to connect on those.” 

Just as McBride explained postgame Friday night, with CSU’s heavy rushing attack, it’s naturally going to create opportunities to run play-action and go deep. They’re the type of plays that can completely open up a run game, put points on the board, and change the momentum altogether. Who knows what would have happened Friday night if the Rams would have jumped out to a 14-0 lead, instead of playing a tight game early. Maybe it would have made a big difference, maybe it wouldn’t have, but it definitely would have got the crowd absolutely rocking.

The long winded point of all this is that Wright has the speed to burn just about anyone over the top, we’ve seen him do it throughout his career. It’s just a matter of working out the kinks and refining the timing a little bit. The silver lining with this situation is that after missing a few early, Centeio did settle in and connect with Wright on a couple of nice touch throws down the field in the second and third quarter. But moving forward the more the Rams can get the ball in Wright’s hands, the better. It’ll open up the run game, it’ll take some pressure off Centeio and McBride, and it will create momentum for the offense. 

Front seven needs to rediscover identity 

Easily the most surprising part of the game was CSU’s front seven getting absolutely neutralized by the SDSU offensive line. That might even be putting it politely considering the Jackrabbits allowed zero sacks and averaged 7.1 yards per carry over their 34 attempts. 

The front seven has to be the foundation of CSU’s defense. It’s where they have the most experience, the most depth, and the most talent. If the coaches cannot count on them, it’s going to be a brutally long season. 

“I sat up here and told you that we’ve got one of the best front sevens in the league. Now I’ve got to sit here, look you in the eyes and say we gave up seven yards per rush,” Addazio said. “That’s got to get fixed. That’s on me. It can’t happen. It’s not going to happen.”

Clearly Addazio was just as surprised about the defense’s awful showing as all of us were. The Rams were missing Toby McBride on Friday night but most of the team’s core was out on the field. I feel confident in saying that I do expect the front seven to play much better against a Vanderbilt team that lost by 20 to East Tennessee State on Saturday. But this group cannot rely on talent alone, they’ve got to play sound defense. 

“We preach gap sound defense. We didn’t do that tonight,” Scott Patchan said, before calling their defensive showing unacceptable. “We’ve got to go back and correct it, you know, be gap sound, make sure everyone is playing great and that starts with me. I was voted a team captain by my teammates, I’ve gotta hold myself to a higher standard, and then do better than as a unit.”