College Football News Preview 2020: Colorado State Rams Keys To The Season
Biggest Key To The Colorado State Rams Offense
Convert to power as soon as possible. Boston College ran the ball 659 times last year for 3,291 yards and averaged five yards per carry. Under Steve Addazio, the team never ran fewer than 500 times in his seven seasons and went over 550 in each of the last four years.
Colorado State ran 395 times last season, and hasn’t run the ball more than 550 times since 2013.
There will be balance, and the great receiving corps won’t be ignored, but the faster the offense can start hammering out 200-yard games on a regular basis, the better.
Biggest Key To The Colorado State Rams Defense
Force a whole lot more takeaways. The pass rush in place, the hitters are there, and there’s enough experience to start doing a whole lot more for a defense that wasn’t all that bad. However, the takeaways came in bunched.
The Ram D only forced 13 turnovers last year. That was bad, but 11 of them came in four games – there were just two takeaways in the other eight outings. The team will be good, but not good enough to overcome a -11 turnover margin again.
Key Colorado State Rams Player To A Successful Season
RB Marcus McElroy, Sr.
At Boston College, now-CSU head coach Steve Addazio liked to get the ball to his 250-pound power back AJ Dillon over and over and over again. And then he got him the ball again. He’ll be looking for his AJ Dillon on the Rams right away.
The bulked-up McElroy ran for 370 yards and three touchdowns as a 218-pound back in the rotation. Bigger, stronger, and ready to be given every shot to be the new guy’s workhorse, this could be his offense to take over.
Key Game To The Colorado State Rams Season
Wyoming, Oct. 31
The first seven games of the season are against teams that didn’t go bowling. Colorado State won’t win all of them, but if this is going to be any sort of a decent season, it has to take down a bunch of them. At the very least, in Mountain West play, it’ll be the favorite against Fresno State, New Mexico, and at UNLV to start things off.
Wyoming is the measuring-stick moment. The Rams have lost four straight to the Cowboys, but the home date might mean everything considering the finishing kick of at San Diego State, at Air Force, Utah State, at Boise State.
– Colorado State Rams Schedule Breakdown & Analysis
2019 Colorado State Fun Stats
– Rushing Yards Per Game: Opponents 195.8 – Colorado State 132.2
– Field Goals: Opponents 15-of-15 – Colorado State 14-of-24
– 4th Quarter Scoring: Opponents 124 – Colorado State 69