What We Saw: Camper Bounces Back in a Big Way

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – None of the shenanigans were going to happen in a game.

Nobody was going to walk up and pop holder Joe DeLine with a blocking pad. There wasn't anybody on the field who was going to pop Cayden Camper around the shoulders with one, either. The opposing sideline was not going to empty the bench, surround him, yell at him and throw stuff at him as he set up for a field goal attempt.

None of it was going to happen in Saturday's game. It did at practice. All week. Creating chaos was what coach Steve Addazio called it, and it worked.

After missing three consecutive kicks heading into the 22-6 victory over Toledo, Camper was a big part of the offense, connecting on all five of his field goal attempts from varying yardage.

"We addressed the problem this week in practice. We put him in tough situations," tight end Trey McBride said. "We had the whole team screaming in his ear, we had Coach Addazio hitting him with bags. We put him in the most pressure he's probably ever been in in his life. We had guys running in front of him when he was about to kick, we had guys throwing stuff at him when he's about to kick. He knew exactly what he was getting himself into, and he prepared like a pro this week. He came out there and showed it. He went 5-for-5, and I'm just really happy – a lot of kicking is mental – and he was able to turn that around and have a great game. I was super happy for him and this team."

Camper is the first Colorado State kicker to go 5-for-5 in a game since 2002, when Jeff Babcock helped open up the season in the same fashion in a road upset of No. 22 Virginia. Camper connected from 31, 42, 29, 47 and 23 yards in the victory, and he even had to make one of them twice as CSU called a timeout as a player ran onto the field late.

Addazio was clear he wasn't going to give up on the kick who shared placement duties as a freshman, first appearing against Arkansas in 2019. But he lost the job in camp last year, then regained it this fall camp. The struggles for him were real, and while his head coach believed in him, he needed better results.

Thus, chaos in practice, celebration in the game.

"Cayden did a great job. I'm very happy for him," Addazio said. "A lot of people were asking will we still try to kick field goals, and I said yes, of course we will. He has a great leg. He was great during training camp, he just lacks game experience. This will be a great boost for him."

Camper is now 12-of-22 in his career and has made all 23 of his point-after attempts, making one Saturday. It was a stark turnaround to what the junior from Pueblo experienced the week before, and as much relief as he felt, his teammates were thrilled with his bounce-back performance.

Even the guy from a rival high school in Pueblo who happened to be a special teams star on the day, Thomas Pannunzio, whose 70-yard punt return for a score was the Rams' only touchdown in the game. He also removed a bit of a monkey off his back, too.

He still hadn't heard the end of being taken down by a kicker at San Diego State on a kickoff return. Now, his teammates will let it go, especially when his return broke open a tie game and became a real momentum shift.

"I feel like special teams always gives you more momentum for offense or defense when you see a play like that," running back David Bailey said. "Like a blocked punt or a score for a touchdown. Tad Pole, he did a great job, and also our punt team did a great job. It gave us momentum. I felt it gave the team momentum. We didn't do as good as we wanted to on offense, but I felt that punt return for a touchdown helped us out for this game."

Sticking Together

Jacob Riis was a Danish immigrant and a writer in New York. He didn't write about sports, but plenty of coaches love to quote him when it comes to inspiring teams and building programs.

Pound the rock, the Stonecutter Credo, simply means to keep pounding. It will not be the last swing responsible for breaking the stone, but the accumulation of all the swings prior which do so.

That's what Addazio felt his team has been doing, and what showed in Saturday's victory. It wasn't a breakthrough, but it provided proof in the philosophy.

"We talk about pounding the rock. Well, we put a couple of cracks in the rock," Addazio said. "We didn't demolish the rock, but any stretch of the imagination, but we put a couple of cracks in there. We've just got to keep pounding away, and it always helps when you get to talk to the kids a little bit about bearing fruit. When you bear a little fruit, it helps. But at the end of the day – like I said last week, I'll say this week – they watch the tape. They watch the practice tape. I think what they understand, they know, we have to have great weeks of practice, we have to take one day at a time and one week at a time. Nothing's as good as it seems, nothing's as bad as it seems, somewhere in the middle, reality falls. That's really where we are."

Addazio believes the team is bought into the process, and thus, they kept swinging. A win is great, and those on the road are even harder to achieve. The suggestion his team would slow down after losses the first two weeks didn't set well with him.

He didn't like the negative connotation, because, even though losses do not sit well with him, he found signs his team was making improvements along the way. Eventually, he felt he'd see cracks, but never in the locker room.

"I'm just proud of our team, proud of the way they fought," he said. "Too much time in our sports world today, people want to be negative. People want to have negative things to say all the time. What we want to do is build. We want to improve, and we want to get better, and we stuck together as team, and that's a really important thing to learn how to do. How to win, how to win on the road, how to stick together, how to weather adversity and how to handle the negativism that makes me sick to my stomach.

"I'm proud of our team, and I'm proud of the way they fought today. This is just one brick. We've got a big game next week, and we have to get back to work, but this was an important brick to get on the road."

Strong First Impression

On paper, the secondary was susceptible. Understandable. Tywan Francis was out with an injury, and he was leading the team in tackles. Logan Stewart had to miss the first half due to a targeting call the week prior.

Insert true freshman Jack Howell, who had limited game reps the week prior.

An "oh my" type of thing, but as Saturday played out, most definitely not in a negative way.

The offspring of former CSU standout safety John Howell played like a vet, posting nine tackles in the game – five of them solo stops – and sniffing out plays throughout the game. When the second half started, nobody was in hurry to take him off the field. He just kept playing, adding a pass break-up, too.

"I'm proud of that guy. He's been working," linebacker Dequan Jackson said. "Like I said, it's all about the preparation. It makes it so much better when you win when you know you worked hard for it. He's communicating, he's out there playing his balls off. You can't ask for anything else from a young guy. He's still developing, I think he will continue to develop."

So does Addazio, as well as a few other youngsters. Henry Blackburn was playing alongside Howell, and he's just a sophomore, but one who now has made five consecutive starts and is third on the team with 19 tackles. At corner, Robert Floyd has been moving into the mix.

There will be mistakes made along the way, but in time, Addazio is confident it will all pay off. And the reality is, they are playing pretty well in the present.

"He's going to be a hell of a player," Addazio said of Howell. "He's got great football in his blood; his dad was a great player, and he's going to be a great player. He's just going to grow from here. We're playing with a lot of young guys back there. We're playing with a walk-on, true freshman corner, a true freshman safety, a sophomore safety who's played six games in his career. We've just got a lot of young guys, and that's good. I mean, they're going to develop.

"One day we're going to have a really experienced, veteran back end. That's going to happen, too. We just have to build it. It was one game, it was a hell of an effort. We've got things to correct and get better at."

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