Kelly Lyell

kellylyell@coloradoan.com

Ronnie Letson was giving CSU's five quarterbacks a play to draw up against a specific defense.

Faton Bauta grabbed an orange dry-erase marker, found a spot on the whiteboard and quickly diagrammed what every player on the field, offense and defense, would likely do.

Letson, the Rams’ quarterbacks coach, had barely finished assigning plays to the other four when Bauta stopped to check his work, circled the receiver he’d throw a touchdown pass to and put his signature at the bottom. He put the marker down, turned around and smiled widely.

He nailed it, and wanted to make sure everyone in the room knew it.

Cocky? A little bit.

Confident? Clearly.

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That was the point of the exercise.

“The concept is if you can draw it up right without seeing it on the board and you have to start from scratch and draw up the play, it’ll really help your understanding,” junior Nick Stevens said.

Bauta spent three years running coach Mike Bobo’s offense at Georgia before joining Colorado State University as a graduate transfer this offseason, and he wanted to show his old coach, and new teammates, that nothing had been lost in translation during their year apart.

Stevens familiarized himself with Bobo’s playbook last spring and threw for 2,679 yards and 21 touchdowns while leading the Rams to a 7-6 record and their third straight bowl game. He doesn’t draw plays up with the same flair as Bauta, but he’s every bit as confident in what he’s doing.

“Last year, he'd (Letson) call a play out, and I’d have to kind of think for a minute,” Stevens said. “Now, it’s kind of second nature. He calls it out, and I know exactly what to draw up.”

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The other three quarterbacks in the room before the April 8 practice — redshirt freshmen J.C. Robles and Chandler Drachslin and true freshman Collin Hill — have to put a little more thought into what they’re drawing on the whiteboard. They check each other’s work and make a minor correction or two before all the quarterbacks go back over their work while explaining to Bobo and Letson how they worked through their reads to reach the conclusions they did.

***

Looking at each of the drawings, I could see why each quarterback would go to a specific receiver under the circumstances. But I couldn’t begin to tell you the process each worked through to get there.

Much of the terminology they were using went way beyond my knowledge. And I played football through high school; even winning a state championship my sophomore year, and I’ve covered the sport for more than 30 years at the prep, college and professional levels.

There’s a lot more to the game of football, as it’s now played, than the casual fan, with a hot dog in one hand and cold beer in the other, sees from the stands on a sunny fall afternoon at Hughes Stadium.

Everything coaches, players, managers and trainers do has a purpose. From the exercises in the weight room during offseason drills — such as pull-ups using towels to improve their grip — to the water-filled footballs used by running backs to improve their ball security.

Better grip, strength and conditioning coach Ryan Davis told me and about 20 others who were participating in a two-day clinic for high school coaches last weekend, leads to fewer missed tackles. Carry the water-filled footballs wrong, without keeping “your wrist above your elbow and your elbow tight to your body,” and you won’t be able to hang on as the water sloshes around, running backs coach Bryan Applewhite said as he passed one around the room.

It was a lot heavier than I expected. And, hold the ball, filled with equal amounts of air and water, just a few inches away from your body, and the water rushing to the bottom point all but pulled it out of your grip.

Applewhite has the running backs carry two water-filled balls at a time, one in each hand, while teammates run alongside them and try to pry them loose.

Reducing turnovers is a point of emphasis for the Rams this spring, Bobo said.

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Offensive linemen run through ladders painted on the field to teach them to take short, choppy steps that won’t compromise their base of support when they go to make a block, offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Will Friend said. They run through chutes that force them to stay low when they fire off the line of scrimmage.

There are similar drills that tight ends, receivers, defensive linemen, linebackers and defensive backs do every day, as well, to reinforce skills critical to their success.

Coaches spend hours combing over video after each practice, looking for errors in technique that need to be corrected and for players who aren’t giving the “100 percent effort, 100 percent of the time” that Bobo considers one of the cornerstones of his program.

First, they watch video of the players in their position group running drills, then they come together — offensive coaches in one room, defensive in another — to review the full-team workout.

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Nothing escapes their notice. Maybe it’s an offensive lineman, taking the wrong angle on his first step in a combination block with a teammate. Or a receiver making a cut a yard or two early. A running back taking the wrong path to the quarterback to receive a handoff. Or a fullback failing to identify and block a blitzing linebacker.

They watch each play over and over until every coach in the room has seen what he needs to see and says whatever needs to be said before moving on to the next play.

They seem to find errors on every play. But when I asked Bobo about that later, he said there were plenty of plays, even in just the second week of spring practices, that were executed correctly by all 11 of the offensive players. Some of the “corrections” were nothing more than minor adjustments in technique rather than alignment or assignment.

It’s important to “be disciplined in the details,” said Bobo, whose introductory talk to the coaches Friday morning contained many of the same points of emphasis as a keynote speech given that night by legendary CSU coach Sonny Lubick, who guided the Rams to six conference titles and nine bowl games in his 15 seasons running the program.

***

It's the next morning. A Saturday. And the Rams are holding their first scrimmage of the spring that afternoon.

Players return at 10 a.m. to eat breakfast together, receive medical treatment and get taped up, if necessary. Then they go over the same video from the previous day’s practice with their coaches in position-group meetings to correct any mistakes before there’s a chance to repeat them.

“You need to have that extra preparation in the meeting room to have success on the field,” Stevens said. “If you’re not prepared in the meeting room, you’re not going to have success in practice.”

The first spring scrimmage is that afternoon at the stadium, so there’s a game plan to go over.

Again, the defense meets in one room and the offense in another.

I go with the defense this time.

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Defensive coordinator Marty English gives a quick talk to the defense as a whole, then dismisses the linemen and defensive backs to their own meeting rooms.

With just the linebackers left in the auditorium, he turns on an overhead projector and goes over the various defenses the Rams are going to run in the scrimmage. On first-and-10, they’ll use one of these six-to-eight combinations of alignment, blitz, line stunt and coverages.

He moves down the sheet to show the options for second-and-short situations, second-and-long, third-and-short and third-and-long.

The names and terms are a little bit easier for me to understand. There don’t appear to be as many variations as the offense had from the base alignment and schemes.

Still, English spends a few extra minutes to make sure each of the linebackers knows what he’s supposed to do in every scenario and reminds them to communicate with the defensive line and defensive backs. Every player on the defense must know what everyone else is supposed to be doing on every play.

“Do your job; that’s how every defense is,” junior defensive end Jakob Buys said.

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English takes a few minutes to discuss the format of the scrimmage with the linebackers, the number of plays the No. 1 offense and defense will run against east other, then the No. 2s , and so on. He makes sure each linebacker knows what unit he’s on that day, then sends them off to the locker room to get their gear.

The bus to the Hughes Stadium, he tells them, is leaving at 1 p.m., so they better be on it and ready to go by 12:55.

Although it’s just a scrimmage, it’s the first opportunity they’ve had since the Dec. 29 Arizona Bowl to show what they can do in a game-like atmosphere. They’ve invested too much to let it pass them by.

Bobo says it repeatedly, and Lubick did, too.

“There are no shortcuts.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news