Mike Bobo was hoping he would see shades of the Colorado State defense that pitched shutouts in six different halves during the 2016 season when the Rams lined up in the Potato Bowl against Idaho last month.
After going back over every play from the 61-50 loss on Dec. 22, a game in which the Rams gave up 30 first downs and 606 total yards, Bobo said Friday his defense has to make major strides heading into next season if CSU is going to open its new on-campus stadium as a contender for a Mountain West title.
“We’re 7-6. We’re not where we want to be,” Bobo told reporters in Fort Collins during an end-of-season news conference. “How do we get there? The only way I know how to get there is to turn up the heat.”
The Rams won three of four games in November, including a road rout of eventual league champion San Diego State, to earn bowl eligibility. But the bowl loss was full of big plays, blown assignments and missed tackles that painted the picture of the work that must be done on the defensive side of the ball as Bobo heads into his third season at CSU.
“Our defense had six halves of shutout football. That’s championship level defense,” Bobo said. “That’s the expectation I have of the defense of being dominant. We’re not going to shut everybody out every game, but we want to be dominant. On the flip side of that, there were times where we didn’t play at all like a championship defense. So what’s the issue? Is it our deficiencies showing up and people taking advantage of our deficiencies? Is it us not playing at the level we need to play at to be a championship defense? That’s the stuff we need to figure out.”
The good news for CSU is that it will return experience at every level on the defense and three of its four top tacklers. Linebacker Kevin Davis, who led the Rams with 110 tackles, will be tough to replace, but veterans such as safety Jake Schlager and linebacker Josh Watson and up-and-comers like defensive tackle Toby McBride, who had a team-leading four sacks as a freshman last season, make up a promising foundation.
“The positives are there,” Bobo said. “We have to correct the negatives through coaching, through training, through recruiting. We’ve got to put them together to form that championship defense I expect us to play.”
CSU on offense returns several players from a unit that gained steam toward the second half of the season. The Rams averaged 47.8 points over their final six games.
Bobo said Nick Stevens will head into the spring practice and fall camp as the team’s starting quarterback. Stevens, a junior last season, was benched following the first start of the year against Colorado. He returned to action after true freshman Collin Hill suffered a season-ending knee injury on Oct. 8.
Stevens returned to guide the Rams to a 4-2 mark to close the regular season. Hill is expected to participate in individual drills during spring practice, Bobo said.
