Trey McBride is Exactly Where He Wants to Be
He wanted another year as a Ram, putting the NFL on hold
The topic was pretty hot around Christmas, and while it’s calmed down a bit, Trey McBride knew it would circle back around.
When he meets with reporters, especially early on in fall camp which opened last week for Colorado State’s football team, they were curious as to why the homegrown product turned down a chance to be a sure-fire NFL Draft pick this past May.
It’s a legitimate storyline, for sure. It is his goal, to be certain, and it was right in front of him. When it came time for him to make a decision -- and his mom asked him over the holiday break while he was working on a puzzle, breaking a room of silence – he basically asked himself a different question.
Why would he leave?
“People ask me and it’s always why didn’t you leave, but Fort Collins is where I want to be,” McBride said. “At the end of the year we can discuss that and where I’m at and what I want to do. I’m excited to play football, not worry about the NFL but where I am right now, and that’s Colorado State.
“It was tough, but at the end of the day, I love CSU, I love Fort Collins. I love the people who I’m surrounded with. Fort Collins has done a lot of good things for me, so I wasn’t quite ready to leave. Money wasn’t the driving factor for me. I love everything about CSU, I love what Coach (Steve) Addazio and his staff are doing, and ultimately, I wasn’t quite ready to go yet. I didn’t want to grow up quite yet, living in the real world. I love it here, and ultimately, I get to play another year with Toby (his older defensive lineman brother). That’s special. I get to play that last year with him, knowing how his career has gone and knowing he’s going to be ready to go this year, I was excited to have him play one more with me.”
From the moment Trey committed to the program, he was bought in and raring to go. He played as a true freshman, providing just a glimpse of what he could do. Who could forget his first touchdown, a 48-yard catch at The Swamp in Florida, outracing the secondary to paydirt. His sophomore year, he pretty much kicked down the door of potential, pulling in 45 catches for 560 yards and four scores. He had the 69-yard hurdling effort against Fresno State and his first 100-yard game against Boise State.
What most people didn’t realize – and he didn’t either at the time -- was he played the majority of the evening with a lacerated kidney, sustained in a first-quarter strike to his rib cage. A year later against the Broncos, he was on special teams when he chased down Kekaula Kaniho on a punt return, forcing and recovering a fumble.
He loves Colorado State. That’s why he’s still here. He is just as bought in, even with a coaching change, and the commitment he has shown to the Rams is being paid back. Addazio knows his tight end had a tough decision to make, and he made sure he and his staff have it pay dividends for all of them down the road.
Addazio hasn’t been around Trey for a long time, but he’s spent enough time with he and his family to understand how they think and what’s important to them. He’s also walked this path with other players, and Maurkice Pouncey is chief among them. He could have left early for the NFL, but he could also be more prepared. An extra year made him a first-round pick.
Addazio calls it cheap labor for the NFL. The player is good enough, but not fully ready. Get him in later rounds and develop him for pennies on the dollar. Agents, who players have just met, see the money, too. With McBride waiting a year, the idea is to add rounds to his draft stock and digits to his paycheck.
“I just think his preparation, his mental approach to the game and further physical and fundamental development and mental preparation are going to help him. It elevates him,” Addazio said. “You come out on the scene, your name is out there and it grows. The more it grows and more eyes are on you, the more your stock can rise. It’s a timing thing, because he was out there and it was floated he could come out early, now his name comes out strong. The NFL looks favorably on that.
“Trey thinks he’s good, but not in a bad way. He loves ball, he’s a great kid and fun to be around. He’s going to make our team better, and our team will make him better. It’s real important to him. He wants to see us succeed, and he wants to bring this program back to a winning program. I think all the above, it’s all good.”
The goal is to make it better. The Rams as a team, who only had a mini-package season of four games, are immediately improved with Trey’s return. From the start of camp forward, Trey is solely focused on making himself and the team better for results on the field, not necessarily what will make him a bigger name in the draft. Those things will all work hand in hand naturally.
This summer, however, was a bit different. Trey and the coaching staff were all about helping out the process with no games on weekends. Sort out some technique issues. Get bigger, stronger and faster in a unique way. All of those measurables will help set him apart in May, but for the next four months, increase the Rams’ chances as well.
I’m focused on CSU right now. I’m focused on what we can do as a team and I’m excited and confident our team can be the best we’ve been in a long time. We’ll see what we can do this year. I’m not worried about last year; it’s too late to go back now.Trey McBride
Trey is a good player. He doesn’t deny the fact, but he’s also the first one tell you he can get better at everything, including the things he’s already known for far and wide.
Start with blocking. It’s his favorite part of the game. He deftly walks the fine line between the acceptable nasty and unsportsmanlike. Watch a game and take in his blocking. Now wait for a referee to come up and put a hand on his shoulder.
“They’re both awesome. Burying people is pretty cool, because it’s another person who is doing the same thing as you are and you’re just showing your manpower over them,” Trey said. “That’s something I look forward to, but it’s also fun knowing the refs are watching you the whole time, making sure you’re not doing past the whistle. It keeps you on your toes. I want to do as much as I can without getting in trouble.
“I love when the refs come up and talk to me and tell me, ‘hey man, you’re getting close.’ That makes things special. It’s happened a handful of times. It seemed like every game the past couple of years. I’d go out with the captains and they usually warn me out there. The refs watch film on the teams before, and they talk. It’s nice, but at the same time, if I didn’t have that reputation, I could probably push it a little more. I try to walk that fine line of the dos and don’ts.”
Yet when they watch film, position coach Cody Booth sees things. McBride’s butt is too low. His first step could be better, and so could his hand placement. All of those things add up.
Those are the discussions they had in spring camp and carried over into the summer. The details are what Trey looked for when he watched film with Booth or by himself. Booth knows it is all about leverage, each and every aspect of the set up and finish. He’s a punishing guy for sure, but not perfect.
Booth’s been in the league. He knows, and Trey is listening.
“It’s about everything I do matters. Attention to detail with the motion, it’s my stance,” Booth described. “We always joke about getting his butt up a little bit in his stance. It’s little details like that. It bothers me, and it bothers the coaching staff as well. For him, it’s a direct reflection of the detail, he wants perfection in everything he does.
“That’s part of being a pro. Handling your business, being a perfectionist, almost to the point where it’s exhausting because you’re working so hard at it. I want him to be a leader too, lead the group. That’s going to make him a better player. Everybody has their own view on leadership and leads in a different way, but I think he’s come a long way this offseason just watching him. He’s hungry. Him getting second team and all that stuff.”
Booth tells his room he only wants to say things once. That means if he tells Trey to keep his back side up and his back level, Cam Butler and Brian Polendey should listen, too. Don’t make him say it twice. So this makes Trey apologetic about how many times the butt comment has been directed at him so far.
This year is about doing better.
The second home of any serious collegiate football player in the summer is the weight room, their vacation spot the field where they run and condition. For head football strength and conditioning coach Scott McLafferty and his staff, primarily Nathan Morris, the offseason was about taking Trey and some of his teammates in a new direction.
That particular lifting group has moved beyond the pushing of excessive iron, but being more proficient in how it is done. The goal is maximize their potential in what McLafferty and his staff call peak power. Not just can you get the weight up, but how explosive is the motion with any of the weight they press. In Trey’s case, they already knew he had the strength of an NFL tight end. The goal was to get him to the level of an elite one.
“He knew he needed another year to develop mentally and physically,” McLafferty said. “We knew his strength numbers were great, his ratio of power output and all that stuff is great, and he moves the bar very well. Now we need to see how far he can push that. Athletically, we were improving all those numbers. It’s not how much are you lifting, but how are you lifting it? That’s what we started working on.
“What it’s gauging is finding the highest velocity through the whole range of motion. It’s finding the peak, and that’s what he’s trying to engage. As he comes down at the bottom and drives up, somewhere it’s going to get to the peak.”
Morris added it is all about the highest power output in the full range of motion. The program is Elite Form, and through it they will track average through the whole rep and the peak, which is the max power output. The result is the creation of an overall better athlete. Morris said Trey walked into the weight room at the beginning of the summer with a peak output of 1,486. Now, he’s at 2,000.
What they are doing is something new, and so far McLafferty and Morris have been encouraged by the gains in overall results in power potential and gains made in peak power within the lifting group. Morris added Trey ran 21.7 MPH in his 40-yard dash, where his previous best was 19.6.
“It’s cool. The machine they have that tells you where you started and where you’re ending is awesome,” Trey said. “You really get to see through numbers how much stronger you’ve gotten. You lift all the time, and most of the time, you don’t really notice it as much, but when you put it on paper and look at it, it’s amazing how much stronger our guys have gotten in just a seven-, eight-week period. Coach Morris and Coach McLafferty have done a great job of putting guys where they need to be to improve the best they can.
“There was a time when I could hardly even bench, and now I’m repping what I used to max. It’s cool to see how much stronger you’ve gotten in a short period of time.”
His aim at growth wasn’t limited to just inside the walls of Canvas Stadium. No, a smart individual takes advantage of all opportunities before him. And where better to look than next door.
Well, really down the street, to another Fort Morgan tight end who had a legendary career for the Rams, Joel Dreessen. A guy who was recently announced as part of the incoming Hall of Fame class, someone with nearly a decade of experience in the NFL has to know something, right?
They’ve met, and they’ve golfed. They’ll talk about hunting even, but always about football. Dreessen ran him through the ringer to add the extra push.
“He put me through a workout and walking me through what I could improve on blocking, showing me some things that he’s learned in his time playing football, and we talked about a lot of things,” Trey said. “He showed me how to run better routes, how to block better and he put me through a full workout where I was drenched in sweat. It’s cool to have a guy like that in my corner who I can call for any advice. I can send him film, and that’s another thing we did. I brought my film and we watched a couple of games and he walked me through the plays and what I was doing good and bad about each play. It’s just cool to have a guy like that who can help me and coach me and lead me in the right direction.”
So his summer was not spent on one aspect of his game, but all of it, because it is a point of pride. He’s an all-around tight end. He can block, where we knows others are content to just split out and be a big target. He wants to line up next to the tackle and drive a defender in the ground on a running play. On the next, he’ll run a route over the middle, and maybe on the next snap, split out and create a mismatch.
For him, old school is still the best, and there are no one-trick ponies in those classes. He’s a bit agitated by not being a first-team preseason all-conference pick, but whatever.
“We’ll see at the end of the day who is that guy,” he said.
He made a commitment to the program he loves, and a coaching staff he respects. In short, Trey made the best decision for him. To his core, he’s appreciative of the commitment they’ve made to him, for the here and now and his future.
“That’s why I’m so excited about Coach Addazio and his entire staff. They’ve been nothing be great to me,” Trey said. “They take care of their guys, and Coach Addazio loves every one of his players. It’s special. It’s like a family here, and I love it. Coach Addazio has made that commitment and followed through, and I love it.”
But with camp now in full swing, Trey would prefer to leave the NFL talk behind him. It will come back around soon enough, and he’ll be ready for it then. Time and place.
His time and thoughts now are consumed on getting the offense in synch. He’s excited about the season. All of it. Ask him about South Dakota State and having fans in the stands. Or about an SEC school coming to Fort Collins. The exhilaration of raising the Bronze Boot.
Heck, ask him about his brother and this one extra year they get together on the field. It’s time for another season, his last in green and gold. They last in green and gold. This is what matters most.
“I’m focused on CSU right now. I’m focused on what we can do as a team and I’m excited and confident our team can be the best we’ve been in a long time,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do this year. I’m not worried about last year; it’s too late to go back now.”
Not that he would want to. Trey McBride is exactly where he wants to be.