FORT COLLINS — Jay Norvell led the Mountain West last year in horseshoes and hand grenades. Most teams rent when it comes to close games. The Rammies slapped 20% down in cash, bought a ranch house and stuck a cute picket fence out front.
“(We’ve) just really kind of gone back old-school,” the CSU football coach said after the Rams wrapped up their first scrimmage of the spring on a frosty Saturday morning in FoCo. “We’re talking about effort, we’re talking about detail, we’re talking about finish.
“And those are the things that I was raised on in this game. And it really comes down to that when the season comes, to play in those tough moments during the year. When you’ve got to find ways to get over the hump, (it) comes down to effort, comes to detail, comes down to finish.”
Saturday’s scrimmage was an open affair for fans, the faithful, stalwart and shivering inside Canvas Stadium. This proved small comfort for the poor devils who sat through it with blue fingers and toes, clapping in the face of 40-ish-degree temps, high winds and a light, spitting rain.
Less than 18 hours after a kiss of summer and ocean-blue skies on a FoCo Friday, the ash and grey rolled in like a blanket from the frigid North Atlantic. A taste of Scotland off South Shields Street, Poudre in plaid.
Undeterred, the Rams pounded away at situational stuff. Two-minute drills on offense and defense. Red-zone sets. Late-game simulations. Little thing after little thing.
Which was by design, of course: Seven of CSU’s 12 tilts last fall were decided by nine points or fewer. To put it more acutely, the Rammies were 224 seconds away from 8-4. They were 98 seconds away from 7-5.
Nobody did close the way CSU (5-7, 3-5 MW) did close, baby. But take out the nail-biters that didn’t involve Boise State last autumn, and one’s fingers start to bleed. In those other six games decided by nine points or less, the Rams wound up 2-4.
The Holy Holker that beat the Broncos in the wee hours at Canvas was one of those all-time gifts from the football gods. The Catch-22 of that Catch-5, of course, is that said gods didn’t just collect for a Hail Mary. They took interest payments out on Norvell’s soul.
The Rams led CU and Deion Sanders by eight with 2:06 left in regulation in Boulder. They lost in double overtime. CSU led UNLV by one with 44 seconds left. It lost by two on a field goal with three ticks on the clock. The Rammies rallied to tie Hawaii on the road in a win-or-no-bowl matchup with 54 seconds left. They lost on a 51-yard kick as time expired.
That’s the trick with little things: Ignore them and they add up. Like cavities, eating away at a program from the inside.
“We had a very specific plan of what we wanted (Saturday),” Norvell continued. “We went some short-yardage. Goal-line. And we practiced, we scrimmaged in the red zone. We did a 2-minute (Saturday) and it’s always good to do 2-minute when we have officials. And we’re just really … focusing on our end-of-game decision-making, our end-of-game coverages, our end-of-game strategies, and putting our players in those situations so we can coach and learn from it. So that was really good (Saturday). I thought that was good on both sides.”
The gap from second or third in the Mountain West to, say, sixth generally comes down to fine margins. Norvell’s Rams, much like young quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi, proved maddeningly fickle in a pinch. Over the last two seasons, CSU has yet to finish higher than ninth in the league in three underrated statistical categories: red-zone conversion rate (ninth last fall; 12th in ’22), penalties (11th last season; 10th in ’22) and turnover margin (10th last year; ninth in ’22).
Context: Rival Wyoming ranked first and fifth among MW programs in red-zone rate over the last two campaigns; second and third in fewest penalties; and eighth and first in turnover margin.
Is it any wonder the Pokes are 10-3 in their last 13 tilts decided by nine points or less?
And is it any wonder pundits see a potential make-or-break year for Norvell in Year 3, especially as new interim athletic director John Weber is charged with getting the Mountain West’s biggest football underachiever bowling again?
“Everything’s good,” Norvell said of his conversations with Weber, who replaced Joe Parker this past February. “We’re plugging forward. We’ve got things that we’re trying to accomplish here at CSU. And we’ve got a lot of work to do, still. But everything’s been fine. Everything’s been good.
“I mean, I’ve been doing this for, I don’t know, close to 40 years — I don’t like to count how many. But it’s always the same. You have to perform. And that’s good. That’s what you expect. And I think the most pressure we have is (from) ourselves. We know what the expectations are.”
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