Rams have plenty to prove
FORT COLLINS» The Colorado State football team can’t just forget about last season. When a team struggles as much as the Rams did in 2018, it doesn’t make sense to do that.
The Rams have made adjustments from the top down. Now with fall camp set to begin Thursday, everyone will soon have a chance to see the effects of those changes. Here are some story lines to follow through camp leading up to the season opener against Colorado on Aug. 30:
Collin Hill’s continued growth. If you question the impact Hill has on this team from a leadership standpoint, think back to last year when he was named a team captain despite having played fewer than five college games and losing his starting spot to K.J. Carta-Samuels while working back from a torn ACL.
Hill has always had the trust of coach Mike Bobo. The redshirt junior turned some heads at the Manning Passing Academy at the end of June, drawing praise from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen.
“It was a great experience, and I was really honored that they asked me to come down there,” Hill said. “They’re great people. They’re super humble, and I learned a lot from all of them. It was just a lot of fun to go down there and be around the other guys and form some relationships with them and work the camp with the high school kids. I’m really happy I went down there.”
The effects of a present Bobo. Hill isn’t the only one working his way back to full strength. Bobo is inching toward a full recovery from what doctors described as peripheral neuropathy, a condition which damaged some of Bobo’s nerve endings and landed him in a hospital for 10 days in the middle of last season’s fall camp.
The absence undoubtedly took a toll on the entire program, and though he still has a ways to go before he’s fully recovered, he’s here, and that matters as much as anything.
“I know I wasn’t at my best last year, and that’s my goal, is to be at my best this season,” Bobo said this summer. “I feel good. I’m not 100 percent. Some days I feel like I can run down the hall, and some days it’s a little bit worse. I’m getting there. It’s just slow, which can be frustrating at times.”
Energized defense. After the expedited spring schedule ended in March, much of the focus this summer was in the weight room. Paired with what players and coaches called “straining to the ball” throughout spring and many of the contributors across the defensive line returning, the Rams have the chance to continue that growth beginning next week.
“We’ve gotten bigger, stronger, faster. We’re more amped to get after the ball, and everyone’s on the same page going towards one goal,” Jones said. “We have a lot of experience coming back. It helps to know that last year we had games where we played at a high standard, but a lot of games we didn’t. We’ve got to get better to be a consistent defense, and if we can get that going, then we know the impact that can have on the team.”