COLORADO STATE OFFENSE

Change is constant, particularly in college football, but the Rams have had more than their fair share of it lately.

Jim McElwain led the team to one of the best regular seasons in program history and then left before their bowl game to take the Florida job.

Garrett Grayson broke just about every CSU passing record as a senior before being drafted by the Saints in the third round of the NFL draft.

Left tackle Ty Sambrailo, the leader last season on an inexperienced offensive line, still plays in Colorado, but now it’s for the Denver Broncos. Dee Hart, a former five-star recruit that transferred from Alabama, stunned everyone by leaving school early to declare for the draft (he went undrafted and has yet to sign an UDFA contract).

With all that being said, there are still some interesting pieces for the Rams offense to work with. Rashard Higgins is one of the best players currently in college football and the best wide receiver to ever play for Colorado State. Barring some sort of serious injury, he’s a future first round draft pick.

The team returns almost every significant pass catcher from last year, and has a lot of young talent that’s another year older and (theoretically) better.

The biggest question is: who will get these guys the ball?

The two most likely candidates to replace Grayson are redshirt sophomore Nick Stevens and redshirt freshman Coleman Key. Stevens may have the edge right now; he has more experience (he was Grayson’s back-up last season and played in multiple games) and after this year’s spring game, new head coach Mike Bobo said that he thought Nick did a better job of protecting the football from turnovers.

But Key was a more highly touted recruit, has a bigger arm, and just looks like a future NFL quarterback (he’s listed at 6’4″, 220 pounds). It wouldn’t be shocking to see both of these guys play at some point during the season, but you’d have to think that Bobo will want to pick “his guy” sooner rather than later.

The offensive line should be solid, but will likely struggle to contain good defenses. The Rams have had an offensive lineman drafted in the second round in each of the last two drafts; that streak will almost surely end at two. It’s not a bad group, there just aren’t any really outstanding players to speak of.

The running back position will likely be a committee led by Treyous Jerrells, who was very effective in his first year at CSU last season, and a group of talented younger backs. The Rams have stockpiled running backs in recent recruiting classes, so they shouldn’t have too many issues finding production at the position.

Overall, the offense will probably take a small step back from where they were last season. Grayson was really tremendous in 2014, and his leadership and experience at the quarterback position cannot be easily replaced. Stevens is the only quarterback currently on the roster who has ever played in a college football game, and his experience consists of five games and zero starts. Higgins is too good for the passing game to break down completely, but it’s highly unlikely that the Rams will finish 2015 8th in the country in passing yardage like they did in 2014. 

 

COLORADO STATE DEFENSE

The Rams defense hasn’t lost a ton of talent from last season, but the players they did lose were pretty important.

Middle linebackers Aaron Davis and Max Morgan were tackle machines for the last few seasons, and cornerback Bernard Blake was the team’s best corner in a secondary that was shaky at times last years. The team also loses LaRyan King, who wasn’t a starter but was a valuable member of the Rams defensive line rotation. 

The biggest loss is Davis and Morgan. The Rams have some experienced linebackers on their roster, but any linebacker that played any significant amount over the last few years is either playing on the outside or already graduated.

Davis and Morgan weren’t exactly incredible athletes (as evidenced by the fact that both went undrafted) and the Rams defensive system put them in a position to make lots of plays, so the drop-off might not be gigantic, but it would be silly to expect the same level of production out of the middle linebackers this year. Unless the defensive line takes a big jump forward, the Rams run defense seems like it will be less effective this year.

Losing Blake hurts as well, although the impact there might be a bit harder to see. The Rams biggest weakness last season was pass defense, and Blake did help stabilize that group somewhat.

The good news for CSU is that every other member of their secondary is back, including the starting safety duo of Trent Mathews and Kevin Pierre-Louis. DeAndre Elliott will probably take over as the team’s #1 corner; he struggled mightily in the first half of last season, but Elliott might have improved more than any other Ram over the course of the year. 

The Rams defensive line is a solid, if unspectacular, group. Terry Jackson and Joe Kawulok have the most experience and should see the most snaps, but CSU has a deep group up front (15 players listed as defensive lineman on the team roster) and will likely take advantage of the depth by rotating players in and out, much like they have in recent seasons. 

On special teams, Jared Roberts, the Rams kicker for the last three seasons, has graduated. Redshirt freshman Wyatt Bryan converted the team’s only field goal attempt in their spring game, a 42 yarder. Hayden Hunt, a junior, is one of the better punters in college football.

 

BUY OR SELL?

There are very few people expecting the Rams to win 10 games again like they did last season. They will have a first year head coach and a quarterback who’s never started a college game; that’s not exactly a formula for success. 

The bottom line is that no one knows exactly what to expect from the Rams in 2015. They could win eight games or lose eight games, and it wouldn’t be very surprising either way.

The Mountain West is not exactly the SEC, so I’d probably put them at the higher end of the that estimation, but Rams fans hoping that this is the year they finally beat Boise and ascend to the top of the conference will likely be disappointed.

PREDICTION: 7-6 (And loads of catches and yards for Rashard Higgins)

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Nolan Lees is the author of our Colorado State Football 2015 Spring recap. For more analysis and commentary about Colorado State Football, please visit his blog at wrtym.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @NolanLees.

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