Rams must deal with Aggies’ speed
F O RTC O LLI N S » Utah State’s offense has gone big and fast this season.
Big, as in the number of explosive plays they’ve hit, ranking among the nation’s leaders in plays of 10-, 20- and 30-yards or longer. Big as in point totals, leading the nation at 51.3 points per game. It’s allowed the Aggies to produce fast, with 22 scoring drives taking less than a minute.
Exhibit A is Utah State is sixth in the nation with 35 plays of 35 yards or longer.
That plays right into a Colorado State defense that ranks 100th or lower in the nation in allowing chunk plays to offenses. The Rams rank 101st by allowing 27 plays of 30 yards or more, 115th by allowing 167 plays of 10 yards or longer.
“You have an opponent like Utah State, where they can run the ball, throw the ball, a good quarterback, a lot of guys on the perimeter, that’s your main focus,” CSU safety Jordan Fogal said. “You obviously don’t want to give up big plays, and when you do, they hurry up and they’re on the ball, they have another play in mind. We’ve had trouble with that also this year, lining up quickly when teams are tempoing us.”
Yeah, there’s that, too. Utah State will run tempo with their offense faster than any other teams the Rams have faced this year.
The Aggies are ready to go, whether they’ve done something good or had a play go for negative yards. The Rams have that to contend with, which makes it all the more difficult to head coach Mike Bobo.
It’s a point he made after practice. Utah State is going to hit some plays, it just will. His message was don’t celebrate, because the Aggies don’t care, they’ll be ready to move on. So do the Rams.
“I mentioned that after practice. You have to have some mental toughness. You can’t hang your head,” he said. “They spread you out, they do a lot of things offensively that put you in a bind defensively. We have to do a better job of when a run spits, or a pass, we have to get a guy on the ground. The safety’s got to get a guy on the ground.
“You have to be focused on your job every snap. You can’t get caught up in the moment of the play that just happened, whether it’s good or bad. We might make a good play and have a sack. We can’t be jumping around. We’ve got to get our eyes to the sideline, we’ve got to get lined up.”
CSU’s defense has been plagued by allowing big plays all season. Nevada was just the latest example of what’s ailed the unit for the Rams, scoring on pass plays going over the top.
It’s been a season-long issue, and for Bobo, it is a mixture of things. It’s technique and execution, assignment discipline and sometimes, just getting beat one-on-one.
This Saturday, the Rams are tasked with turning that around against an offense that does it better than most.
“We just have to get to the ball,” defensive end Emmanuel Jones said. “It’s all out effort and hustling. Getting to the ball and putting hats on hats, color on color, pursing the ball.”
Making it all the more impressive, Utah State is doing it all with depth. Darwin Thompson has almost 850 yards rushing and 14 touchdowns, but Gerold had almost 700 yards rushing and eight scores on the ground.
At receiver, the Aggies have six players with at least 20 catches, eight in double digits; all but one of them have a touchdown reception. Quarterback Jordan Love is an impressive trigger man (2,676 yards passing, 24 scores) with a plethora of weapons to make it work.
Because of it, Utah State has already set school records with 66 touchdowns and 513 points.
It’s impressive, and it comes quick and from many different angles. The quick part is what strikes Bobo most of all.
“I think it’s a lot because of the tempo. They’re going fast. They’re running zone plays, they run a little bit of counters, but they’re going fast. And a guy is looking to the sideline and he doesn’t really have his cleats in the grass, or he’s not got down in his stance and they’re coming off and you catch people. In year’s past we’ve had a lot of explosive plays that way because of going fast and guys are looking to the sideline.”
In that regard, the Aggies have plenty of whiplash victims, with the next glance a sharp turn of the neck toward the end zone.