Colorado State football fans who are worried about the role star players Warren Jackson, Dante Wright and Trey McBride will have under new coach Steve Addazio needn’t worry.

Addazio and offensive coordinator Joey Lynch are well aware of those players’ skills and will continue to showcase them as much as possible, they said after a recent practice.

“Those guys are dynamic; we’re going to feature them,” Addazio said. “We’re not dummies.”

Jackson, a 6-foot-6, 215-pound senior, was one of the top receivers in the nation last year, catching 77 passes for 1,119 yards and eight touchdowns.

Wright, a 5-9, 170-pound sophomore, scored six touchdowns – four receiving and two running. He was used primarily as a receiver, catching 57 passes for 805 yards, but added 214 rushing yards on 17 carries for an impressive 12.6 yards-per-carry average.

McBride, a 6-4, 260-pound junior tight end, was a beast at the end of the season, shedding two and three defenders after nearly every catch. He finished the season with 45 catches for 560 yards and four touchdowns.

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They’re the three most dynamic players on CSU’s offense, and new coordinator Joey Lynch is excited about what they can accomplish this fall.

“You see them on film, and you know they’re talented guys,” Lynch said. “I’ve been really, really impressed with them, and their skill set out there matches what you thought. But what you don’t know off the tape is their work ethic, how they take coaching and how they respond.

“They want to be great.”

And Lynch, who spent the past six years as the assistant head coach and offensive coordinator at Ball State, has every intention of adapting the Rams’ offense to make sure they can be.

He’s got a strong-armed quarterback in senior Patrick O’Brien to deliver the ball to his star receivers and a head coach who has already seen what his team does best in just six days of practice, including a scrimmage last weekend. CSU was already scheduled to put spring practices on hold through March 24 for spring break, even before decisions in recent days by several schools and the entire Southeastern Conference on Friday to suspend practices over concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

“I knew he could throw and had a strong arm, but he’s got really good feet,” Lynch said. “And I think as a passer, how you move actively – body balance and rhythm – he does that very naturally, so that’s been really excited to see.”

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As contradictory as it might seem, the potential for such a potent passing attack is why Addazio speaks so often of the need to improve the running game. If the Rams can’t run the football, defenses can skew their schemes to slow the passing game with blitzes to pressure the quarterback and extra defensive backs to blanket receivers.

That was often the case the past two seasons, when the Rams gained nearly three times as many yards through the air as on the ground while going 3-9 in 2018 and 4-8 in 2019. There was far more balance during their 10- and eight-win seasons in 2014 and 2013, respectively, and through three straight seven-win seasons from 2015-17.

“If you can’t run it at all, then you can’t win,” Addazio said. “So, that’s not going to happen. … You have to have the ability to run it; doesn’t mean you have to run it 100 times a game, but you have to have the ability to run it in the most critical moments and move the chains, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

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His emphasis on improving the running game is consistent with what the Rams’ past two coaches – Jim McElwain and Mike Bobo – each said while putting some of the most productive offenses in school history on the field and showcasing a pair of finalists for the Biletnikoff Award (Rashard Higgins in 2014 and Michael Gallup in 2017) as the outstanding receiver in the nation.

The Rams threw the ball almost exclusively in their first two spring practices, Addazio said, and run competitive third-down periods every day in which the offense has to move the ball against the defense. The offense is often put in second- and third-and-long situations in those drills where they’re forced to complete passes to pick up first downs.

They’ve spent a lot of practice time throwing deep balls downfield. And they’ve had some pretty good early success.

So much so, in fact, that Jackson believes the passing game will be “even more explosive” this year than it has been each of the past two seasons, when the Rams averaged 305 passing yards a game.

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Jackson isn’t worried the new coaching staff will forget about him or his fellow receivers while devising game plans this fall. And O'Brien said fans shouldn’t worry about it, either,

“I think (Addazio) knows the type of players we have to be able to catch the ball, and I think he knows that I’m a pretty good thrower myself,” O’Brien said. “… I think everyone who I was throwing the ball to last year is coming back, so that’s just another year together. I think we can even take a bigger step forward as an offense throwing the ball.

“I think we’ll surprise some people, honestly.”

Kelly Lyell covers CSU and other local sports and sports-related news for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, follow him on Twitter @KellyLyell and find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. Help support Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a subscription today.