Calm and Controlled, Hejny Off to Fast Start

The numbers have been acknowledged. They have to be as impressive as they are.

Hauss Hejny has thrown nine touchdown passes – matching a two-game mark at Colorado State -- and a 75-yard scoring run for good measure. He's hit on 65 percent of his passes for 539 yards and just one turnover. With him taking snaps, the offense has clicked and the Rams are off to a 2-0 start.

None of his teammates seem to go there first, however. Nor do his coaches. They appreciate his demeanor. His presence on the field. His calm. They'll tell you he is composed. They say he's chill. Or just plain cool.

Why that stands out is his experience. He's made just three career starts. Hejny is young, but running back Mel Brown said he acts like an old man.

"Literally," Brown said.

"There's definitely an element of that, which, when you're coaching that, it's awesome," CSU quarterbacks coach Matt Mitchell said. "He's a focused guy. He has a great personality, and the guys really respect how hard he works."

That's the guy Mitchell has come to know. It's the one he saw during recruiting and during spring practice. An even keel, always. He's consistently the same guy, which Mitchell finds valuable at the position.

It makes Hejny smile. He wants to be seen that way by his team. He also knows he is just 21 years of age and outside of the vicinity of the football complex, he can be youthful. He is human. He admits he can get a bit of road rage. He's an older brother, so buttons will be pushed both ways.

In short, he's normal.

"Definitely around the facility, it's business time, we're going to work, so I try and be cool, calm, and collected and show everybody that I really care about what I'm doing," Hejny said. "This is a job at the end of the day, but I do enjoy it.

"What ends up pissing me off in this town is the red lights sometimes, or a car drives up and the light turns red, and then you have to wait, and then it turns green again, but they don't go. I've caught a 12 o'clock train in the middle of the day, lunchtime, I'm in a rush to do something, there's a slow train going 10 miles an hour. It's like, all right, guys, can we not do this at midnight instead of 12 in the middle of the day?"

We've all been there, but most have never been in the huddle keeping an offensive focused when a lead has been cut down to three points or even one. When a drive is needed to regain momentum and feel like you're back in control.

Those can be emotional times, and Hejny does play with emotion. He also plays with passion which stems from his love of the game. The thing is, at his age, he just doesn't show it. That's what has those around him so impressed.

Then his head coach, Jim Mora, combines that with the attitude of not holding back. It was suggested to Hejny that on a late play call, if he ran with it, the best thing to do would be to slide and protect himself.

Instead, he ducked a defender and went 75 yards for the touchdown.

"I just like his attitude of attack, attack, attack. Yet -- I've said this before -- he's conscientiously aggressive," Mora said. "He's very conscious without being reckless.

"But he's aggressive as hell."

Intuitive, too. He really may be an old soul, because he is very much aware of everything around him. Situationally, down and distance, where the offense is on the field, how much time is on the clock.

He fully understands what it means to be a quarterback and that it isn't just the football team relying on him.

"It's definitely something that's gradually happened, but I would say when I first transferred to Oklahoma State and had an opportunity to compete for another starting quarterback job, I was, all right, like, it's time to put my big boy pants on, and really take this job seriously," Hejny said. "There's a lot of money in this game now, and a lot of people who count on the quarterback -- the whole team, the whole university counts on the quarterback to be successful. I was, man, I need to really take this seriously and take it and do this with pride. I would say that was the turning point when I first transferred there, and then it's carried over on the year.

"You'd be dumb not to at least acknowledge it. You just don't let it take over your brain, or your every day, but you gotta acknowledge it, and then move on. I take each play as its own, each opportunity as its own, and make the most of it, whether it's in the weight room, in the film room or bonding with teammates."

One would even call the approach rather mature.

Mitchell is a firm believer the success his quarterback is experiencing is directly related to this. While Hejny is young in age, Colorado State is his third school. Quarterbacks need to be able to read a defense, and the way he acts, it shows he can read a room, too. Not every place does things the same way, but the lessons can be adaptable.

And Hejny has learned how to handle all sorts of things when it comes to playing the most critiqued position in the sport.

"I do believe that's a trait that is important to me when evaluating a quarterback. It's just their poise and their calm and, it's cliche, but it doesn't matter what happened on the previous play or the next play," Mitchell said. "You've just got to focus on that play because tough things are going to happen. Adversity is going to come. They're going to throw a few looks at you that you're not ready for. We've got to adjust, and he handles all that really, really well."

For the Rams' offense, he's the eye of the storm. The stillness in the center of all the chaos, the place where things are calm. It resonates in the huddle.

Others may have seen more game action, but Hejny has been the one to rally the troops and keep them focused on the task at hand.

"Even the first week I was telling him, 'you're really calm.' Like he's chilling," Brown said. "He's chilling in the pocket. He's not stressed out. I've been at three different schools now at this point and I've been with a lot of different QBs and Hauss just sits back there like he's a – like he's just a vet. He's just been doing it for years and he hasn't. And it's just amazing to see.

"Just with him being out there, we're all calm. We all got that, 'all right, we can do this.' Like it's nothing."

Hejny has made it look easy. Natural.

Who cares if he gets mad at a random driver on the road who doesn't signal a lane change. And who hasn't lived in Fort Collins and cursed the skies about the train which seems stuck in time.

That too, is natural. But staring down a blitzer on third down and still delivering a strike to move the chains, that requires experience beyond his years.

And that demands to be appreciated.

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