The "Holy Holker" — how Colorado State's game-winning play versus Boise State came to be

Holy Holker! What a catch!

Trailing by 6 with the ball at the Boise State 33-yard line and just six seconds remaining in the game, Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi dropped back and threw a perfect ball into the crowded end zone.

If a Boise State defensive back would have tipped the ball a different way, it very well could have been game over and yet another Broncos victory in the series. Unfortunately for Andy Avalos though, and anybody that cheers for Boise State, the ball was tipped towards the front of the end zone. Where a trailing Dallin Holker was in position to make one of the biggest catches in program history. 

I will never forget this night. pic.twitter.com/dDrAWtumCK

— Justin Michael (@JustinTMichael) October 15, 2023

While the play may have looked chaotic live, and it was to a degree, it was also the result of meticulous attention to detail. And as Jay Norvell explained postgame, everybody was exactly where they were intended to be. 

After lining up Louis Brown, Tory Horton and Dallin Holker in a trips formation on the right side of the field, the trio all ran towards the end zone but every man had a different responsibility. 

Horton is the fastest so he’s supposed to be the guy that gets the deepest downfield. The person that they’re actually trying to target is Brown, who is an explosive leaper and has great success high-pointing the football. If “LB” can make the catch, that’s what he is supposed to do. However, he can also tip the football to Horton in the back of the end zone or to a trailing Holker. It’s a situation that the Rams practice every Friday. And in this instance, CSU was able to perfectly pull off the tip drill for the game-winning score. 

“On the Hail Mary, Tory told Dallin to be ready for the tip,” Norvell said. 

“I knew it wasn’t going to be a clean catch,” Horton added later. 

Horton continued, explaining that they’ve been practicing this exact scenario for so long. And he told Holker that the ball was going to get tipped in the direction of one of them, so be ready to come down with it. 

“I was like, the tip is going to Dallin, I promise you,” Horton said. “And I don’t know what happened, but as soon as I jumped up and I didn’t see the ball, and then he pulled up with it — I said, I called it out. No doubt. I called it out, so that’s crazy to me. That’s why I was so shocked.”

With a smile on his face, Holker calmly laid out how he was just doing his job in that situation. He was supposed to stamp himself on the goal-line and be prepared for whatever happens next. 

“I had a good feeling about it,” Holker said, before explaining how everyone deserves credit for fulfilling their roles. The offensive line allowed Fowler-Nicolosi enough time to throw a gorgeous ball, which Brown and Horton then went after aggressively, and in the end, it landed in his hands. 

“It just worked out perfectly.” 

Prior to the win over the Broncos, Norvell doesn’t believe his teams had ever successfully pulled off a Hail Mary in that specific way. Games like this, though, are exactly why you prepare for the possibility. 

“Tonight the ball bounced our way,” he said. 

After years of losing games like this in a heartbreaking fashion, seeing CSU pull off the Hail Mary for the win was certainly a welcomed sight for sore eyes in Ram Nation. It’s also a testament to the work that these players have been putting in day after day. And it’s a perfect example of how emphasizing the little things in practice can pay off in a major way on game day. 

Unprepared players make sloppy mistakes that cost teams in major moments. But when you’ve run the scenario a million times — even if it wasn’t previously in a live-game situation — inherently you’re going to be much more collected when it’s time to try and pull it off for real. 

Whether it was recovering the onside kick, spiking the ball to set up the game-winning pass, or completing the tip drill on the Hail Mary, we saw a Rams team that executed a variety of unique situations to perfection. You don’t pull off that kind of thrilling comeback win without putting in the work between Monday-Friday. 

You also don’t pull off that win without total buy-in inside the locker room. On Saturday night, we saw a Rams team that was willing to go to war for each other. And they refused to quit until that final whistle blew. 

“Everybody just believed in each other,” Holker said. “We were all just like, we’ve got this. We knew that we could get down there. And we knew that we had a chance. So we just rallied around each other.” 

It’s a long season and many things can happen along the way, so we don’t want to get too carried away, even if it truly was a miraculous win. Moments like this can be transcending for a program though. And it may just have been what the Rams needed to spark the next great run for the program. 

Regardless of what may or may not happen this fall, Ram Nation was fortunate to witness one hell of a moment in history Saturday night. As Norvell joked postgame, many will lie and claim that they stayed for the entirety of the game. The folks that really did stay, though, they got to be part of something really special. 

It felt like the Rams exorcised a lot of demons with the Homecoming win. We’ll see how they can build off it moving forward.