What We Saw: Air Raid Finds a Rhythm

FORT COLLINS – The Air Raid showed up. Strong, too.

After struggling to gain traction last season and in this year's opener, Colorado State's offense performed as advertised in Saturday's 43-35 double-overtime loss to No. 18 Colorado.

"I think we need to spread the ball around to our playmakers. Offense is about getting your good players the ball; if you have good players, they need to have the ball in their hands," CSU coach Jay Norvell said. "I think we did a better job of that tonight. Brayden (Fowler-Nicolosi) did a better job; we need to protect the football. We can't turn it over, and that's a big part of the game, but also, he was aggressive, and I think that was important, that he was aggressive.

"We'll continue to push him and improve him."

Colorado State had a trio of 100-yard receivers – for the first time in program history – as Fowler-Nicolosi threw for 367 yards in his first start of the season, hitting on 24-of-47 passes. Tory Horton broke the school record with 16 receptions (previously 14 by Jeff Champaign in 1983), accounting for 133 yards. Louis Brown IV had the first 100-yard game of his career with 10 reception for 131 and his first touchdown, while tight end Dallin Holker had six receptions for 109.

With CU's secondary covering its backs, the Rams hit crossing routes throughout the game which did major damage as the Rams produced 499 yards of total offense. For Fowler-Nicolosi, there was no choosing, just taking.

"I think I look at all my boys. There's not one specific guy I look at," Fowler-Nicolosi said. "That being said, I absolutely have full faith in Dallin will go get up and get a ball or make that tough catch, go get a touchdown. I think specifically, one receiver, no. I'm well aware that all my guys in the red zone are very capable of making plays happen."

Folsom Field wasn't exactly welcoming to the Rams, which Fowler-Nicolosi could sense. He said it would have been an awfully lonely feeling going out there alone, but he knew he wasn't flying solo. He felt the support of his entire team heading into the start.

He said there's much to learn for him, particularly attention to detail and cleaning up his mistakes. He said a pick-six in any situation is unacceptable, but from all around him, he was getting praise.

Holker said it was deserved, and they had no doubt the redshirt freshman could produce such a game if given the help he needed.

"I'm so proud of him. Brayden played a great game out there, and we support and love Brayden," Holker said. "I thought he played an amazing game. I thought he played good enough for us to win. That was the plan. We knew Brayden had that confidence, and we knew if he was feeling it, if he got a chance, he could do something like that tonight."

In Space

What Colorado had done so well entering the game was getting playmakers in space and letting them create yards. For the majority of Saturday's game, the CSU defense did a good job of tackling in space, making the Buffs earn their yards.

"We really hammered down on the fact that this Colorado offense can't live or survive without space," safety Ayden Hector said. "We really hammered down on swarming to the ball, running to the ball, letting a hitch be a hitch and nothing more than that. All week at practice we worked on swarming to the ball. That was really the vocab word of the week: swarm."

Colorado finished with 418 yards of total offense, but 148 of it came in the final two minutes of the game and overtime. Not being able to close out the game with the Buffs starting on their own 2 will be a teaching point for the unit moving forward, but there were a lot of positives from the game which made the Rams feel they're getting back on track.

Hector finished the game with 10 tackles, all of them solo stops. Colorado State produced 9.0 tackles for loss, with two each by Mohamed Kamara and Tony Pierce Jr.; both of Kamara's came on sacks, of which the team had four.

"I feel like we really showed what we can do. There's obviously a lot of things we can get better at, including our discipline and not getting a lot of penalties," Hector said. "Obviously, we didn't get the win, but this performance does give us hope for the rest of the season. I think we can really dominate for the rest of the season."

Option C

Colorado State had two highlight catches in the game, with Tory Horton toe-tapping and stretching on the sideline to move the chains. Then there was Holker's shoestring grab which he turned into a 35-yard touchdown reception.

Both were remarkable, but which was better?

Holker suggested another entry, however.

"I think we should be talking about how good Tory's throw was on that play," Holker said of his 30-yard scoring catch in the first quarter off a double pass from Horton. "That was a crazy good throw. That was so ridiculous. That was on the money. Perfect."

It was. It wasn't as if Holker was wide open because he had a defender right on his back. Horton basically threw him open, with the tight end making an over-the-shoulder catch in the back of the end zone.

Horton is now 4-of-4 in his collegiate career, hitting three at Colorado State. He completed both attempts last year with a long of 19. He completed one at Nevada, a 44-yarder against Kansas State. But it was his first touchdown pass. He has a career 548.53 efficiency rating.

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Louis Brown IV

Ayden Hector

Dallin Holker

Tory Horton

Mohamed Kamara

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