The Craig Way Show
Steve Sarkisian on the challenges of Colorado State's Air-Raid offense
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest, life comes at you fast, which is why it's important to find some time to relax a little you time. Enter Chumba Casino with no download required. You can jump on anytime, anywhere for the chance to redeem some serious prizes. So treat yourself with Chumba Casino and play over a hundred online casino style games all for free. Go to ChumbaCasino.com to collect your free welcome bonus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino, no purchase necessary. VGW Group, void where prohibited by law, 18 plus terms and conditions apply. After investing billions to light up our network, T-Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus, right now, you can switch, keep your phone, and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan for Verizon and AT&T at T-Mobile.com/KeepAndSwitch. Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card, a left 15 days, qualifying unlocked device, credit, service, ported, 90-plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tenants, drive the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, maintain communication. Whew! Sound complicated? Renters' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants? Check. Rent collection? Check. Maintenance coordination? cost.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Runners' warehouse. Taking me back to your time as a student at the University of Texas, you graduated what? In 17? Is that correct? 2020. I'm not that old. I'm not that old. Okay. I know the hairline looks old, but- You were in school in 2017. Yes. So, would you say it would have been correct, at least in an overlap sense, to say that you were a classmate of Cam Rising? I had, I think it was a business of sports media with Cam Rising, Demarvia and Overshone, and a handful of other Texas football players. Casey Thompson wasn't in that class, but there was a good group of Texas football players in my class, including Cam Rising. Well, so you say you're not that old. Here's Cameron Rising, still playing college football. And Casey Thompson, and Cameron Rising had a career high five touchdown passes last night. Utahity hits his seventh season of college football, his seventh season of college football. In fact, it's kind of interesting in that a former Longhorn quarterback and a former Aggie quarterback, both were in action last night, Rising for Utah to beat Southern Utah 49-0. Max Johnson, of course, had been in Texas, and every transfer to North Carolina was playing for Max Brown, but Max Johnson had to be carted off the field of the hip injury in the third quarter, and the turnials went on and held on for a 1917 win on the road against Minnesota. Minnesota missed two field goals, including one that would have won the game on the final play of the game. Johnson did have a hip injury, was taken to a local hospital. They weren't sure that whether he was going to travel back with the team, of course, his father is Brad Johnson, the former NFL quarterback for the Vikings and Tampa Bay when they won the Super Bowl. So, yeah, there was that connection. So we'll see what happens after that, and Connor Harold wound up finishing the game for North Carolina. Carolina did get the win, and it was for, I've found this note interesting. It was the first season opening road win for North Carolina in 32 years. It was the first season opening road win for North Carolina since Max Brown was the coach there the first time back in 1992. That's the last time that Carolina had won a season opening true road game, not a neutral side, but a true road game. So good for Mac, and for the Tar Heels, and hopefully Max Johnson isn't too banged up on that. All right, speaking to college football, Longhorns, of course, getting ready for Colorado State. Last night on Longhorn Weekly from Learfield, we visited, of course, Coach Sarg, the season premier of his program, which we record on Wednesdays and then it airs on Thursday. So it aired late yesterday afternoon here on the zone, and Sarg and I, as we always do, down the stretch of the program, discuss the opponent. So here's our weekly excerpt in examining the Colorado State Rams from last night's edition of Longhorn Weekly. We were talking about Jay Norvellum, what he's done in starting to build this program at Colorado State, entering his third year as the head coach there. How about your impressions? I know you've known Coach Norvellum, how about your impressions also what you see from his football team? Yeah, a ton of respect for Coach Norvellum. You know, I've followed his career for a long time. He's been around some great coaches and what he did in Nevada and now what he's doing at Colorado State. You know, definitely the expertise and the air rate offense, and their ability to throw the ball around the field, quarterbacks are really good player from Alito. They got an all-American wide receiver in Tory Horton, but the thing they have is a very veteran offensive line and they've got an older group, they pass protect really well, they spread the field, and then they run it enough in there to challenge you. But you've got to deploy people the right way in the back end. Defensively, a really veteran defense, you've got two great safeties, two all-conference safeties, veteran secondary, great schemes, I will say this in all three phases. They challenge you schematically, offense, defense, and on special teams. So this is a heck of a challenge for Saturday. Do you look at a team when you first start to break it down with your coaches? Is the first place you go to the offensive line? Well, it's helpful because we don't play seven on seven, right? We play 11-man football and so much of the football that these guys grow up playing is seven on seven in the off season, but you've got to be able to be good up front if you're going to be a really good football team and the fact that they've got this veteran offensive line poses some issues for us. You mentioned the quarterback, Brayden Fowler, Nickeloc, won a state championship at Alito and is the guy who leads this program now. They say that he's made an awful lot of progress and went through like a lot of quarterbacks go through some growing pains with interceptions and things like that, but a guy that really has a great deal of confidence as he goes to the field. Well, it really does. And I think he's got great rapport, like I said, with Tory Horton the wide out. I think the addition of our money, you wouldn't feel the guy we recruited here, transfer from Baylor is helpful for them. I think any time you're in a system like he's been in now as he's grown up in it, you're just always better than next year, right? Well, how much better was Quinn from year one to year two? How much better do we expect him to be now going into year three in the system? So I think all that's helpful as well for him. And it's also interesting that the running back Justin Marshall is a red shirt freshman. He didn't play last year. He rushed over 300 yards. He only played three games, right to the end, but they really like him. How difficult or challenging is it, especially when this team does not have this particular team does not have a game on tape from 2024, it's your typical season opening challenge? Well, I think offensively we've got a decent idea, schematically, of who they are. I think what we learned a year ago against Rice and the opener, we got a whole different defense. So, you know, and then you have to adjust on the fly and what that looks like. And so I think offensively we feel pretty good just in general what they're going to do. Hey, they believe in throwing the ball. No, but there's no secret there. Defensively is how they're deploying their people and then how we're going to adjust to put our players in a good position to have some success. How do you also prepare, as you mentioned, Rice did something completely different defensively, knowing that that is always a possibility, how do you prepare guys for that possibility, that element, that everything you're training and working for and game planning for may be completely different what you see when you get on the field. Well, I think that's why you have to have rules in your plays. Your blocking schemes have to have rules. Is it a four down front, a three down front? Is it a bear front? How do we block these plays? And that's what training camp is for. And then you trust your training and you fall back on that with whatever the look is that you get. And then we try to call plays in games like this that are all encompassing, meaning it works versus a variety of coverages and quin noses progression. It works versus a variety of fronts. It's not so specific for this defense. We want this play because you really just don't know. I mean, we have an idea, but you don't know until the ball game begins. Yeah, that's, you know, once it does begin, that's when you find out for sure what you're dealing with because as we said, and you heard Sargent just say it, you know, that's they'll find out when they get out there, how much of a different look they get from the Colorado State defense than everything they've seen schematically, same defensive coordinator, all of that sort of stuff. So you would think, okay, well, maybe it'll, maybe it'll have all the similarities. And, you know, maybe, maybe that'll make sense since you're talking about the same scheme and Freddie Banks is a defensive coordinator there. But hey, we saw that with Rice last year, them give a completely different look. So it's entirely possible that that could be the case. And they'll, you know, we'll have to be ready for that. And they'll have to be ready for any, you know, additional wrinkles that they might get from the Colorado State offense with the Texas defense as well. So that's, that's another thing that Sarg has talked about, just being ready for all of those kinds of possibilities and the way it could turn out and what they, the looks they might get from Colorado State. I will also tell you this, I have a good red shirt freshman running back in Justin Marshall. But well, let me put it to you this way. He was good for three games. He only played in three games. It wasn't because of injury that knocked him out after the third game. So he played in the last three games of the season and ran for 311 yards and two touchdowns. He averaged five and a half yards per carry. He's more of an explosive get to the edge guy, 51080 pounder, that sort of thing and can catch the ball out of the backfield. But you heard Sarg saying Tory Horton, who had 1136 receiving yards on 96 catches with a touchdown last year, and Armani Winfield, who transferred in from Baylor, one of 19 Texas high school football products, he's a former Louisville fighting farmer from right up here in the Dallas forward, Metroplex, Winfield was the guy that Texas actually recruited, started at Baylor's transfer to Colorado State. Those are two guys that can make a difference, as well as Dylan Gaffney, who's a senior, he's from the greater Houston area, Bridgeland, where he caught passes from Connor Wigman, the Texas A&M quarterback began his collegiate career at SMU. He called 23 passes a season ago. So those are guys for them to watch as well, and we'll have more on Colorado State throughout the course of the afternoon. And obviously on a pregame coverage, Longhorn's game day begins from Bevo Boulevard, they're in the Winship Circle to hook them, hang out with Cameron Parker and Mike Hardball, Harge and Mark Henry, and it comes your way at 11.30 tomorrow morning, 11.30 is our pregame start time with Longhorn's game day, and then at 1.30, we'll have the network pregame and the kickoff at 2.30. All right. Up next, it's a Friday edition of inconceivable. We bring it to you next year on Sports Radio AM 13 under the zone in the IR Radio app. Ryan Seacrest here, when you have a busy schedule, it's important to maximize your downtime. One of the best ways to do that is by going to Chumbah Casino dot com. Chumbah Casino has all your favorite social casino games like spin slots, bingo and solitaire that you can play for free for a chance to redeem some serious prizes. So hop on to Chumbah Casino dot com now and live the Chumbah life sponsored by Chumbah Casino. 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