FORT COLLINS — Marty English was raised in Lakewood and starred at Alameda High School before playing collegiately at Idaho State and Northern Colorado. He coached 16 seasons at UNC and nine at Wyoming before joining Jim McElwain’s new staff at Colorado State in 2012.
He was CSU’s co-defensive coordinator with Al Simmons under McElwain before being retained as linebackers coach by McElwain’s replacement, Mike Bobo. But after defensive coordinator Tyson Summers’ departure to take the head coaching job at Georgia Southern following last season, English is back in the coordinator’s role for 2016.
As a Denver-area native who hasn’t coached outside the region, and as a recruiter who has worked the territory for several schools for 29 years, he has a unique perspective on the Rocky Mountain Showdown — Friday’s Colorado-Colorado State matchup in Denver.
“I’m pretty excited about it,” English said. “It’s the in-state rivalry. … It’s fun for me because I know the kids on both sides, both teams, and it’s always easier to talk after the game and not so easy to talk before the game. I know a lot of the coaches, and it’s like playing neighborhood football. You want your neighborhood to be a little better than the other neighborhood.”
After one season of playing the 4-3 as a base defense under Summers, the Rams have returned to the 3-4 base they previously played under English and Simmons, now at New Mexico.
“We’re very multiple defensively, so we can say 3-4,” English said. “But there’s going to be times you’re in the nickle and everything else and you’re in a four-man front.”
Bobo said the transition back to English has been “pretty smooth,” and added, “One, he was deserving of it after interviewing, but two, I liked the fact that I was keeping continuity on the coaching staff.”
And the move to the base 3-4?
“I think it’s helped us a little bit to be able to get some athletic bodies on the field,” Bobo said. “Now, we need some more of those bodies, and we still have to play with three D-linemen. We need more D-linemen, which everybody does. I think it’s good schematically what we do, and I think it’s good for us offensively that we go against a 3-4 that blends to a 4-3 and you have to make adjustments.”
The Rams’ defense returns only three starters from 2015: linebackers Kevin Davis and Kiel Robinson and cornerback Tyree Simmons.
“I think we have the ability sometimes to ride really high and be really good, and then we also have the inexperience enough to sink fast at times,” English said. “There’d be a great middle ground to find in there somewhere. I think that’s where we’re at.”
Simmons, a senior from Gardena, Calif., said English “has shown how fun the defense can be. With our last defensive coordinator, it was all business. … Now we celebrate, we get a little cocky at times. It’s fun now. That’s the difference.”
Of course, that comes before the Rams have played a game.
Davis, a senior from Fountain, led the Rams with 101 tackles a year ago.
“It hasn’t changed much for us as a position group, because we’ve been with (English) since we got here. But it’s good, it’s exciting,” Davis said. The move to the 3-4, he said, “isn’t a big difference for us. It was pretty easy, too, because I’ve been in that system before and it came back really quick, and I think it was the same for a lot of older guys.”
Former walk-on Jakob Buys, from Arvada’s Ralston Valley High, has earned both a scholarship and a starting defensive tackle spot heading into his redshirt junior season.
“I came in when he was defensive coordinator, and we adjusted to what he wanted my freshman year,” Buys said of English. “Having him stay around last year, he still was the same guy, and having him back as coordinator, we already knew what he wanted and knew how we practiced and how we have to get after it each day. So I don’t think anything really changed for us.”