Colorado Takes The Rocky Mountain Showdown 24-3 Over CSU

The Colorado Buffalo came out ready to play four quarters of football against Colorado State and won by a final score of 24-3.  The Buffalo were lead by Tyler Hansen who threw for 192 yards and two touchdowns.  The Buffalo won the ground game with Rodney Stewart who had 67 yards, as part of the Buffs 115 yards  for the game.  Steve Fairshild wrapped up the game very well in his post game interview, seen here.  The Buffs are better then last year and they were better prepared.

Since this is a Sunday recap I am going to do it a bit differently and just throw out some things that I saw that stood out to me as I watched the game live at Mile High.

Mychal Sisson is better then good.  Somewhere in the 4th quarter on a banged up leg of a 24-0 game Sisson got lined up against Scotty McKight on a 3rd down.  Sisson played textbook coverage on a 15 yard fade pattern and stopped the Buffs from a first down.  He then jogged off the field gingerly on his leg.  To me it just showed the heart on defense that was missing last year.  The Rams did a decent job on defense stopping the Buffs on 8 of 13 third downs.  They held the Buffs to 3.3 yards per carry but did look over matched at times by the run game of the Buffs.  Ricky Brewer was flying around making plays too.  The line backing corps is as good as advertised.

The Buffalo won't struggle as much this year as last year.  The offensive and defensive lines played well and they have some legitimate weapons on offense.  However penalties killed them to the tune of 10 for 104 yards.  The Buffs special teams helped them win the field position battle and kept the Rams with a long field on most occasions. 

Pete Thomas did play pretty well despite the three interceptions.  Two of them were diving catches where Thomas will learn the athleticism and speed of the corner backs and keep that ball out of reach in the future.  The other was a missed communication with a receiver so I don't know where the fault lies.  His pocket presence was spectacular for a true freshman in his career opener.  Thomas completed 72.7% of his passes for 196 yards with an average of 8.2 yards per carry.

The Rams ground game was non-existent and was the true reason the Rams struggled.  They finished with 49 yards, freshman Tony Drake picked up 20 of those on one run in the 4th.  Good news is that Tony Drake is fast as advertised.  Bad news is the line struggled all day in pass and run coverage, physically and scheme wise it wasn't pretty for the Rams O-line.

Being the only team in the MWC to lose to a non-ranked team hurts.  It might hurt more as a Rams fan to say that the Buffs played a good game and are much improved from last years team.  The Buffalo are not the Buffalo of last year and they will improve on their 3-9 record for sure.  That won't be the worse loss on the year for the Rams and they made some good plays. 

Next week the Rams travel to west to play a tough Nevada Wolf pack team who beat Eastern Washington 49-24.  last year in Fort Collins the Rams were able to defeat Nevada for their second win of the season.