Would a quarterback shakeup help solve CSU’s offensive identity crisis?

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The frustration is beginning to take its toll for Colorado State football.

After losing yet another winnable game at home Saturday night, the tension was evident during media availability. Both head coach Mike Bobo and his players were visibly discontented as they explained for the 10th consecutive time, how the Rams lost to an FBS opponent.

“Offensively we have zero identity right now,” Bobo said. “As an offense we’re searching, trying to find something and we’re struggling. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board.”

In the 24-10 win for SDSU, the Aztecs failed to consistently move the football — a common theme for Rocky Long’s squad in 2019. Despite winning by 14, SDSU totaled just 238 yards, finished 3-of-14 on third down and averaged an unimpressive 3.8 yards per play in the game.

Lamentably, for a second straight week the Rams failed to capitalize on a stellar defensive outing.

“I was really proud of the effort from our defense tonight,” Bobo said. “I thought they did an outstanding job. Obviously, you’d like to have a couple of them back, defensively, but they were put in bad situations over and over again tonight.”

Bobo explained that between starting the game with a penalty on the kickoff, later allowing a long return and turning the football over four different times, his team could have easily lost by 30. But because the defense held their ground on multiple possessions, CSU was within striking distance for most of the contest.

While the defensive players would not blame their offensive counterparts for failing to show up as they remember when the shoes were on the other feet, a frustrated Patrick O’Brien expressed that they cannot continue to leave points on the board.

“It’s sort of the same sad story every week,” O’Brien said postgame.

The redshirt junior quarterback explained that week after week this team keeps saying the same things — how they’re extremely close to turning the corner but little mistakes are holding them back. Things like not executing in the red zone, failing to convert on short-yardage situations and ill-timed turnovers have been CSU’s Achilles heel for most of the year, so it’s tough to continually make the same errors.

Unfortunately for O’Brien, Bobo feels the same way and plans to re-open up the competition for starting quarterback.

“We have to figure out what we can do to move the ball offensively,” Bobo said.

“We would’ve been better off taking a knee and punting tonight than what we did in the second half.”

Bobo wasn’t wrong — in the final two quarters, CSU’s offense had eight drives — three ended with punts, three ended with interceptions, one ended with a fumble and one ended with a turnover on downs. At one point, CSU QB’s even threw picks on three consecutive plays. Of course, the Rams did score a touchdown in garbage time but at that point it was too little too late.

The question of course is whether shaking things up at quarterback will really make any kind of difference. When Justice McCoy came in the game Saturday night, he immediately threw interceptions on back-to-back pass attempts. Having to come in cold was not an ideal situation but the performance certainly did not inspire confidence.

More importantly, it’s not like changing the quarterback would have improved CSU’s inability to run the football. As we have seen throughout the Bobo era, the run game has always been the foundation of the offense. Even when CSU was most dangerous through the air, guys like Dalyn Dawkins were always the backbone of the unit. So unless the Rams rediscover their running roots, it really wouldn’t matter if you plugged any QB from the last decade into the lineup — CSU would still struggle.

With that in mind, having multiple players run the starting offense, at this point of the season, seems like it could do more harm than good. It’s not like the team is suddenly going to win six in a row. So honestly, with two extremely winnable games on the slate, New Mexico and UNLV, the Rams might as well try to refine what they do best and figure out how to lock down those wins.

From here on out, the Rams are pretty much playing for pride. There’s a very real possibility that a new staff will be here next fall. And with that in mind, the goals need to be stopping the losing streak to Division 1 opponents and being competitive against Air Force and Wyoming. Making a change at quarterback, even if it’s only in practice, only makes these goals more unrealistic than they potentially already are.

The Rams will begin the second half of the season at New Mexico Friday night. CSU has beaten UNM nine years in a row. Time to see if the Rams can snap their recent four-game losing skid and continue a decade’s worth of dominance over the Lobos, even in spite of everything that’s gone wrong this season.