What We Saw: Penalties Remain Costly For Rams

The goal of every coach is to find a weakness and seek improvement. In many instances, Colorado State has been able to do so as a football team this year, though not always consistently nor sustained.

The one place the Rams have been consistent, and conversely, not been able to get a grip on the problem at hand is penalties.

At 7.27 penalties per game, Colorado State ranks 104^th in the nation, along with two other Mountain West schools, San Jose State and this week's opponent, Nevada. None of them are the worst in the league, either. That honor belongs to Fresno State at 7.91. When it comes to the yardage assessed on those infractions, the Rams jump to 119^th in the nation at 70.18.

"Again, I think there's a lot of mistakes going on," Addazio said. "We had some real critical penalties. I can't remember them all right now, but I know in the first half, I think in the first drive, we had a late hit. We had a couple of face mask penalties, and at the end of the game when we were trying to stop them, we had a face mask penalty."

In Saturday's loss to Hawaii, CSU drew nine flags, costing them 100 yards in losses. They came on offense to put the team behind the chains. They came on defense, allowing Hawaii to keep drives alive in what became a 50-45 loss.

Some of them frustrate head coach Steve Addazio because they stem from a lack of focus. Other, such as the face mask call on Toby McBride on the Warriors' first of two touchdown drives in the fourth quarter, come from effort and trying to make a play.

"It happens," defensive end Scott Patchan said. "You want to minimize it as much as you can. Mistakes happen. Great effort to the ball, perfect calls all make up from that. If we just continue to be the team we can be and minimize the mistakes we'll be fine."

It's a hard line to draw at times, but the fact remains the Rams have not really been disciplined enough this season in the area. Four games they've had less penalties than the opposition, and three times less yardage walked off, and some of those instances do not coincide.

An Curious Set of Numbers

With good reason, Colorado State was excited about the tight end room heading into the season. It started, naturally, with Trey McBride, a semifinalist for the John Mackey Award. Then there was the return of Cam Butler from two injury-plagued years. Throw in a developing Gary Williams, and while he doesn't catch passes, the blocking of Brian Polendey.

McBride has been as good as advertised, becoming the first tight end in school history to surpass 1,000 yards receiving in a year. No tight end at Colorado State has caught more passes at the position, or generated as many yards. However, others have more touchdown receptions.

And this year, McBride only has one. That came in the second week against Vanderbilt when he had one of his five 100-yard receiving games on the year. One touchdown out of a team-leading 84 catches.

Odd, right?

It was highlighted again on Saturday night. He had six catches in the game for 89 yards. Williams also had six catches for 92 yards. Butler had two catches for 93. That's 14 catches among them, and four of them resulted in touchdowns – two each for Williams and Butler as Todd Centeio threw for 527 yards -- the second most ever by a Ram quarterback – and five touchdowns – tied for the second most in a game.

"We finally got everybody to go out there and made some plays. That's always great, and I'm proud of every one of them," Centeio said. "That's just the work that we put in in the offseason. I put in a lot of work with Cam, trying to get him back from injury, and Ty McCullouch and Dante Wright, and Trey is going to be Trey. And Gary Williams, he's' having real good spurts throughout the season. We're trying to get him to play more consistently coming up for the next few years. I'm just proud of everybody. We went out there and battled our butt off."

Seven different Rams caught one of Centeio's 29 completions, with Wright leading the charge with eight for 150 yards. McCullouch had two for 57, as the Rams had their most explosive output of the season with five plays going for 30 yards or more, including Butler's 69-yard scoring catch, with him doing most of the work, a play which stands as the offense's longest gain from scrimmage this season. Wright had a 62-yard scoring catch on a perfectly thrown deep ball.

Not What It Seems

Ryan Stonehouse "only" averaged 44.6 yards per punt in the game, and some are going to think he had a bad game. Or even ridiculously think it was because he was punting at sea level.

The reality was, Stonehouse pretty much did all he could do in the game when you considered where he was punting. Only once in the game – his first attempt – did he have the chance to rocket off a 50-yarder, and if it would have gone into the end zone, it would have been 59. Instead, he hit a 42-yarder high, and with better tackling, it would have pinned Hawaii at the 20 or inside.

Like every other one of his four punts, all of which came with the yard line in Hawaii territory. He did put two in the end zone, but both bounced before the goal line and he either didn't get the right spin or the coverage team couldn't make the play. The other two were a 45 yarder with put Hawaii at the 4, and a 39 yarder which made the Warriors start at their own 7.

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