FORT COLLINS — Colorado State held its second “scrimmage” and 12th total practice of the spring period on Saturday morning.
For much of the last month the focus has naturally been on the Air Raid and all of CSU’s explosive play-makers on the offensive side of the ball. This time around, though, it was the defense that headlined the show.
The pass rush was extremely disruptive and consistently created havoc in the backfield. Multiple linebackers were able to come up with interceptions. And the secondary was able to make more plays in coverage than they did in the first scrimmage too.
Colorado State edge CJ Onyechi (No. 2) rushes the QB during the second scrimmage of spring ball. PHOTO: Justin Michael | DNVR Rams
“I’ll give it to them. They came out and played today,” senior wide receiver Ty McCullouch said.
McCullouch continued, explaining that the offense had really been dominating of late, so while he would have liked to have done more individually and would have liked the offense to have done better as a whole, it was encouraging to see the defense step up the way that they did on Saturday.
“We’ve been kicking their butts lately,” McCullouch said. “It was really good to see the D-line step it up. They put pressure on the quarterbacks. That’s gonna be a focal point of our defense — the D-line — so they did really good today.”
Head coach Jay Norvell had high praise for the guys in the defensive front seven as well. He told reporters that he saw some “really great things” from the pass rush and that it was “really encouraging”.
Norvell also credited the secondary for making plays throughout the day, and said the defense as a whole stood out in the short yardage scenarios in the Red Zone.
“They made some plays,” Norvell said. “Some of the drills, I thought that the defense really came through. I thought that the pass rush was really good. And that’s good for the Rams when the pass rush is good. I mean, we do need to play great defense. And we need to stop people, and so I was pleased to see that.”
While it was the defense that won the day, Norvell did add that he felt the offense did some things well. Ultimately the execution wasn’t quite as high as last week but the point of these first two scrimmages was really just to go out and try to run plays in a live scenario anyways.
“That’s the way Spring Practice (goes),” Norvell said. “One side is going to do good one day, the other side is going to do better the other day. The most important thing is what we’ve learned from it, and that we continue to improve and get better. And today, there’s a lot of great learning experiences for all of our guys.”
Next Up
CSU will wrap up spring ball with two more practices on Tuesday and Thursday before hosting the first true Green & Gold Game since 2016 on April 23.
