Move over, Vic Fangio. Colorado State’s Steve Addazio just joined you on the hot seat
For a second there, you almost felt sorry for Steve Addazio. A little. At least until he started throwing his own players under the bus, one by one.
“I would say to you they got caught up in the emotion of the game and took off on the field,” the CSU football coach said of the insanity that made up the final 11 seconds of Utah State 26, Rams 24. “I’m like, ‘Who sent them on?’
“And no one sent them on. So, it just happened. Which means that it’s my responsibility, because that can’t happen.”
Oh, but it did. Dazfoonery. Absolute insanity. A clown show in cleats.
Spike the ball!
Spike it! What are you …
In a sequence they’ll be talking about for years, probably with calliope music playing in the background, the Rams had methodically driven the ball downfield, trailing by two, in the final minute.
Quarterback Todd Centeio, with no timeouts, had Elwayed CSU to the Aggies’ 24-yard line with half a minute on the clock. Then all heck broke loose. Or rather, the Rams’ field-goal unit broke loose.
With 11 seconds left, instead of spiking the ball or throwing a prayer to Trey Mcbride or Dante Wright, the CSU sideline turned into Piccadilly Circus. The offense, while still on the field, expecting a spike to stop the clock, saw their special-teams compatriots racing to the line of scrimmage, shooing them off.
Chaos ensued. CSU kicker Cayden Camper rushed a 42yard attempt with a second remaining on the scoreboard. It sailed wide left, and the stunned Homecoming crowd at Maverik Stadium erupted at their fortune.
“Having said that, we were perfectly set up and ready to kick the field goal,” Addazio continued. “I don’t believe that had any impact on that field goal whatsoever.”
Vic Fangio, you owe this man a beer. Or six.
Fangio, the besieged Broncos coach, uses timeouts in crunch time the way a toddler uses a plate of spaghetti. But compared to Addazio, Uncle Vic is the second coming of Bill Walsh.
They’re also both so in over their heads as head coaches here, it’s pitiful. In some alternate universe right now, Fangio is serving as Urban Meyer’s defensive coordinator. Addazio is coaching Urban’s offensive line.
Alas, we’re all stuck with this reality. And it bites.
“I could tell that they were obviously disorganized,” Utah State coach Blake Anderson told the CBS Sports Network immediately after the tilt. “It just didn’t look organized.”
The kicker to the kicker? Anderson admitted that he was going to call a timeout to try and ice Camper.
Instead, the Rams iced their own guy for him.
Spike the ball! Spike it! What are you …
“It’s frustrating,” said Mcbride, the tight end whose six receptions, along with tailback David Bailey’s 159 rushing yards, went for naught. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Especially given the stakes. Inside track within the Mountain West’s Mountain division. A 3-0 start to league play. More than halfway home to bowl eligibility.
What we got was an evening marred by the hallmarks of poor coaching, from preparation to execution: Painful, silly CSU penalties — nine in all, at least
six of them on offsides calls — and ever sillier mental mistakes.
CSU sacked Aggies quarterback Logan Bonner eight times. The power and leverage advantages along the line of scrimmage were palpable. The bigger, badder Rams (3-4, 2-1 Mountain West) would win a slugfest with Utah State (5-2, 3-1) 11 times out of 10.
But the Aggies weren’t interested in a stand-up brawl — Anderson wanted to duck and weave, to rope and to dope, and tire the heavyweight Rams into doing something dumb.
Team Daz, sadly, obliged. Repeatedly.
And we can’t say the Boston College faithful didn’t warn us: Since 2013, Addazio-coached teams are 9-18 in games decided by six points or fewer. Since
2018, they’re 0-6.
With Boise State (3-4) at home up next, a wounded franchise that CSU hasn’t beaten in 10 tries, followed by Wyoming (4-2)
on the road and Air Force (6-1) at home, those aren’t exactly the kind of stats that inspire confidence along the Poudre.
Nor, frankly, did Friday night. The Rams were having so much fun leading with their fists that they forgot, too often, to use their heads.
Four first-half penalties and two turnovers early gave the smaller, quicker and pass-happy Aggies seven first-half possessions to CSU’S six. And two of those came in the final five minutes of the second quarter thanks to the Aggies’ special teams. USU kicked a field goal, then lobbed the ensuing kickoff into a gap within the Rams’ return unit, recovering the rock at the CSU 24.
And because the Daz chose to sit on his timeouts at the end of the half rather than stop the clock on USU’S stunning postkickoff possession, the Aggies got the ball three different times between the final six minutes of the second quarter and the first five minutes of the third quarter — while the Rams had it only once.
Guess what Daz did with that possession? He took a knee to run off the final 25 seconds of the first half. The hosts, meanwhile, turned those extra cracks into nine points, ducking and jabbing their way to a 23-14 lead that forced the Rams into catch-up mode.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Addazio said after the game about his thinking, or lack thereof, during that mid-game juncture.
“I just (felt) like we had too many penalties in the first half, we turned the ball over twice …”
Defense and a run game travel well on the road. Stubbornness and stupidity, however, do not. And never will.