A look at Colorado State

Since we’re coming off a bye week, I thought it could serve everyone a little bit of good to freshen up or in most people’s cases, learn about our upcoming opponent, Colorado State. Stay tuned for my normal Keys to the Game feature tomorrow, which will hone in on areas Cal will have to be successful with, as well as some of the Rams’ special players.

Also, California Golden Blogs features a nice Colorado State Question and Answer post for ya’ll to enjoy.

And as usual, Ken Crawford at Excuse Me For My Voice has his usual excellent podcast, previewing Colorado State.

And with that, away we go!

Season so far...
Colorado State comes into the game riding a two game winning streak (impressive for a 2007 3-9 team), with both wins coming in nail biters that came down to the last plays of the game. The Rams recovered a late fumble and hit a 20 yard field goal to lift themselves over Championship Subdivision team Portland State, and picked off a driving Houston team with seconds to go to preserve a 28-25 lead over Conference USA team Houston. The Rams’ only loss came to rival Colorado, which was close through most of three quarters of the game.

While I for one, am not overly impressed in close victories over cupcake teams, the Rams enter into Memorial Stadium riding a huge wave of confidence, as they appear to have turned the corner on losing close games, after having dropped 4 games last season by a TD or less. New Head Coach Steve Fairchild has warned against getting too excited, as even he anticipates a few more losses to come this season.


Offense
The Rams try to feature a fairly balanced offensive attacked, being pretty much 50-50 in their pass to rush ratio, (averaging 35 pass attempts per game vs. 32 on the ground). The Rams are averaging 22.7 points per game, and 365.3 yards in total offense.

CSU’s rushing game doesn’t appear to be anything to be really scared about. The Rams average only 104 yards on the ground per game, with an average 3.3 YPC. They’ve also only recorded 3 rushing TDs for the season, with their longest run going 24 yards.

On the flip side, CSU knows the strength of their offense lies in their passing game. Quarterback Billy Faris leads a CSU passing game that ranks second in the Mountain West conference in passing yards per game at 261.3, right behind BYU’s impressive passing game. While CSU has thrown for a good chunk of yardage, they’ve only hit pay dirt 4 times versus their 3 interceptions. Farris may be heating up at the right time though, completing 73% of his passes for 276 yards and 2 TDs against Houston with no interceptions.

Meanwhile, Colorado State’s offensive line has given up 7 sacks on the season.


Defense
Colorado State ranks 7th in conference in scoring defense, giving up 27.7 points per game. It actually gets worse for the Rams in terms of yardage allowed, as they rank 8th in the Mountain West, giving up 383.3 yards per game. Most of those yards come from the air, as CSU ranks last in the conference with 266.3 yards given up in the passing game. While the Rams do sport 4 interceptions on the season, 3 of those came in their 28-25 win over Houston, including the Klint Kubiak’s (yes Gary Kubiak’s kid) INT to seal the game.

Miscellaneous

• As the least penalized team in the Mountain West, Colorado State appears to be a disciplined squad, with a meager 12 penalties on the season for only 91 yards.

• On Special Teams, while their punt return unit isn’t anything to write home about with only 10.5 yards per return, their kick-off return unit leads the conference in averaging nearly 30 yards per return. And considering that Cal’s struggling kickoff team is usually unable to kick the ball off inside the opponents ten yard line…ummm...let’s see 10 plus 30…yeah…carry the one..take the square root, yeah I think we can expect the Rams to consistently starting from their 40 yard line, only needing to move the ball about 30 yards to get into field goal range…yeah…that could spell trouble for the Bears.

• One miscellaneous area working against the Rams though, is that CSU has averaged only one road win a year for the last three years. Will Memorial Stadium be that one win? Eh, me thinks not.

Coaching
First year Coach Steve Fairchild brings his NFL offensive mind after stints with both the Buffalo Bills and the St. Louis Rams. Fairchild is beginning to see improvement in a Colorado State squad that has put up some points early in the season, with a marked improvement in the passing game. Fairchild also certainly has had his experience facing 3-4 defenses from his time in the AFC East which had most of the teams using that defensive base package.

Overview
Again, check back tomorrow for more details as to what we'll need to do to secure a win. With that said, I think Cal has gotten its non-conference trap game out of the way with Maryland (although that statement alone could be the indication of another trap game-dah). Colorado State, while improved, is still not as talented as the Bears, and will have to face an even hungrier Bears team eager to get the taste of the Maryland loss out of their mouths-at home.