Coming off a breakout season from Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, Jay Norvell and the Colorado State coaches are doing everything they can to surround the redshirt sophomore quarterback with as many weapons as possible.
In addition to bringing back the best wide receiver in the Mountain West in Tory Horton, who will be looking to make history as the first Ram to record three straight 1,000-yard seasons, CSU has added multiple big-bodied pass catchers to compliment the dynamic duo.
Donovan Ollie was the first major addition on offense. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound wide receiver joined the Rams over the winter and was a guy that stood out with a touchdown in the spring game. Ram fans hope he can resemble the player that torched the Green & Gold for a pair of touchdowns in the blowout loss at Washington State back in 2022.
Along with Ollie, CSU signed former four-star receiving prospect Armani Winfield. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound redshirt sophomore saw limited action in his two years at Baylor but was considered one of the best wide receivers in the transfer portal in the spring window.
As a star wide receiver at Lewisville High School in Texas, Winfield racked up nearly 2,700 receiving yards and 26 touchdowns. Wisconsin and Liberty were among the potential suitors that CSU had to beat out for his services this time around. Coming out of high school, he had offers from virtually every major program in the country though.
Rounding out the newest veteran wide-outs, the Rams brought over Keynan Higgins, a 6-foot-4, 180-pound sophomore that spent the 2023 season at San Jose State. Originally a three-star prospect coming out of Pittsburgh High School in California, Higgins had a lot of interest from Mountain West and Pac-12 schools. According to 247Sports, in addition to CSU and SJSU, Higgins held offers from Arizona State, BYU, Fresno State, Hawaii, Pittsburgh and Washington State.
Finally, he may not be a wide receiver, but Jaxxon Warren will very likely play a major receiving role for the Rams this fall. In a recent one-on-one interview on the DNVR Rams podcast, Norvell talked about competing with ACC teams to land the converted quarterback, and how excited they are for a player with his athletic profile to be implemented into the offense.
“We scoured the country to find a guy that has his skill set and it’s just really hard,” Norvell said. “He was a power forward and played high level AAU basketball. And he just has all of the qualities that we look for in tight ends. We had to battle SMU for him. Florida State came in on him. And he basically chose CSU because of what Dallin Holker did last year.”
Norvell continued, explaining how the success of Holker, who went from catching nine passes at BYU to catching 65 balls at CSU and being named a finalist for the Mackey Award, really worked as a strong selling point. The same goes for Horton’s numbers being enticing for receivers looking for a spot where they can prove themselves.
“We were able to add quality players in the transfer portal that we really really haven’t been able to add,” Norvell said.
“To get an elite receiver is really hard in the transfer portal. We had to battle for Armani Winfield with Wisconsin and Liberty. He saw the value in coming to CSU because we throw the football, we’ve got a quality quarterback, and he saw the numbers that Tory put up the last couple of years. That really helped us get Armani.”
Going back to his days at the University of Nevada, Norvell has always looked to build the strongest receiving corps possible. While there were certainly individual stars like Romeo Doubs, what made stopping those units so tough is there were always four to five other guys that were just as capable as going off. As we approach the beginning of the 2024 campaign, Norvell thinks this group has a chance to resemble the type of explosive offensive groups he had in Reno, especially with the talent that he also has under center and with the depth the Rams possess in the trenches.
If CSU can lean a little bit more on the ground game like we saw with the emergence of Justin Marshall in the later stages of 2023, but also spread the ball around to Horton, Dylan Goffney and the new weapons, this team has a chance to put up big points this fall.
We’ll see if the Rams can take another major step in the right direction after doubling their average points per game from Norvell’s first to second seasons in Fort Collins.
