Blackburn's Emotions Boil Over To Rams' Benefit

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – He was fired up, more so than usual. Actually, it had been a spell since Devin Phillips had seen his teammate in such a fervor at practice.

"It's been awhile. Last week, he was fired up all week," Phillips said of Henry Blackburn. "It was the beginning of the week, the first practice up to the game. It just lit and it stuck with him the whole week. I could kind of see it coming from the start of the week.

"He was excited. He was really fired up about winning this game. He just had this edge to him. He wanted to go out there and give it all he has for the team and make big plays to help everybody, and hopefully get some emotion going and get everybody moving and ready to play that night."

Which the junior safety did. There was a lot of pent up emotion for the Fairview product. For one, he'd missed the previous two games due to an injury. Then there was the chatter coming out of Reno. There was also the fact some of his teammates had become former teammates in recent weeks.

It just boiled over for him.

In the locker room, the television screens played a boxing match, not game film of Nevada. It was a not-so-subtle message from head coach Jay Norvell to his team. Blackburn was ready to throw haymakers all night long. It all felt so personal for so many reasons.

"I hadn't played the past two games, so obviously that just hurts my soul more than anything not being able to play," Blackburn said. "These guys who came over from Nevada, they're my brothers now. Just talking to them, I needed to have their back. It's like when a family member gets called out and you have to show up and you have to fight. That's kind of how it felt to me and it kinda felt really personal. If they're attacking my coach, if they're attacking my teammates, it's personal. It brought out an emotion in me that I felt the team needed to fell that same way, just the passion and how we needed to play. That was the biggest thing for me: We needed to have our teammates' back, we needed to have Coach Norvell's back, because they called us out for everybody to see. We took it really personal and had a good plan, came in and did what we said what we were going to do."

Blackburn practiced that way every day, and on Thursday, he let it all out verbally to his team.

Throughout camp and in non-conference play, Norvell said he'd been trying to prod his team to show him their soul, to no avail. Blackburn bared his on the day before kickoff.

"Henry Blackburn kind of brought the team together, I think it was Thursday, and he just said enough is enough and we have to play for each other," Norvell said. "It was kind of a battle cry going into the weekend. I tried to get them ready for a fight; I knew it was going to be a real emotional game. We tried to do the best job we could keeping our composure."

Blackburn played with the same fire. He tied for the team lead with eight tackles, one for loss. He forced a fumble and broke up a pass.

As the game played out, with the defense striking first for a pair of touchdowns in the opening quarter, his flame went white hot. Most of all, he was encouraged.

On the field he could tell it was a team playing with each other with a purpose, for each other. It had been a long time coming, and his has him encouraged moving forward. This is a group he will fight with and for. To him, this is the right group of Rams.

"That's something that we talked about as a team, and I spoke to the team about. All those guys, they have all their reasons, and honestly, I don't care about any of it," he said. "I care about the guys who are here, and we care about each other. We want to be around the guys who want to be here, who want to be the difference who want to make the changes around here. We don't want guys on the team who are one foot in, one foot out, who aren't going to give it their all, who are going to have a different agenda. We only want the guys on this team who are rough, tough guys. The beautiful thing about football is it doesn't build character, it exposes character. We saw that when things got hard around here a lot of guys quit. I'm honestly glad we got rid of those type of guys because now we get to see who's really tough and who's really about it. That's something that I find as a blessing in disguise. We went 0-4 at the start of the season, but we got rid of the guys who weren't really bought in to begin with. They had an agenda the whole time.

"That's something I'm not even worried about now. We're focused on the guys who are here and the guys who are willing to do the things that are hard to make the changes around here. We saw that last week with a win. We want to keep building around this and we're sticking together as a group and just fighting. That's the feeling around here with the guys that are here. We're going to keep fighting. We lost guys, but we're going to keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting no matter what and do things to change this around here."

He's not the first player on the team to speak up, and he won't be the last. But Phillips thinks the timing and message really drove home a point for all of them.

Especially the defense, but he felt it had a ripple effect throughout the locker room. The words were great, the response was the difference.

"I think so, but at the same time, when it comes down to it, everybody just had to come together as a team and play our best ball yet," Phillips said. "We have to keep doing that moving forward. We can't get complacent, can't let that one win go and fall back. We have to keep our foot on the peddle, keep our foot on the gas and keep moving forward."

Last week's contest made it easy to make it personal. The trick moving forward is being able to play with the same fire when it's not so outward. The fight from here on out has to be their own.

Blackburn admitted as much, but there will always be a reason they can find, even manufacture if necessary. This home game, at least for him, is just as easy. The missed field goal at Utah State started a six-game slide to the end of 2021, so for him, there's unfinished business.

More to the point, the Rams found a way to win, a feeling the program hadn't experience in nearly a year. Most important, they found a way to do it together.

"Now that we've got a taste of victory and a taste of how we can win as a team, we have to build on it now," Blackburn said. "That's something we've been talking about. Last week's practices were really good, especially on the defensive side I can speak for. We were flying around and just embracing the suck and doing the things that are hard. Now that we have a taste of victory and a taste of what it feels like, we just have to keep building on this and moving forward."

Calendar

Upcoming Events

Recent Results