Rams struggling with communication at the line of scrimmage

Can you hear me now?

K.J. CartaSamuels feels he’s a pretty loud guy when it comes to barking out signals, but the Colorado State quarterback is starting to wonder if his message is always getting through. His center, Colby Meeks, is wondering the same thing about the calls he’s making to the guys next to him.

A failure to pass the message through clear and precise has led to some hiccups on offense, be blocking assignments or checks at the line of scrimmage. The results are obvious — a run game averaging 3.4 yards per carry and CartaSamuels taking a lot more punishment a week ago than either he or head coach Mike Bobo would care to see.

Those two players are central to fixing an issue the Rams haven’t had in awhile.

“We have a new quarterback, we have a new center, and that’s part of tying that together,” Bobo said. “You take away a threeyear starter at quarterback and a threeyear starter at center that was in this offense, that understood everything in a split second, now that split second is going to 3 sec

Conds, probably, before we can comprehend. And we’re not getting 3 seconds, we’re going too fast.”

Colorado inside linebacker Nate Landman had 16 tackles in last week’s convincing win over CSU, and Bobo assessed about 12 of those came when Landman was untouched. That’s a central identifier to the start of every offensive play, and while Bobo said Landman did a good job of moving and disguising, the point is still there.

The message isn’t always getting through, and for CartaSamuels, that’s job No. 1 this week.

“I think we just take away that we have to overcommunicate. I have to overcommunicate and always be thorough with making sure,” he said. “Just because I say something doesn’t mean they heard it.”