Can Mike Bobo bring Colorado State back from the brink?

Bill C’s annual preview series of every FBS team in college football continues. Catch up here!

The most encouraging thing about Colorado State’s 2018 season is that the depth of the stumble doesn’t always matter — the strength of the rebound is all that counts.

This time last year, it was easy to see a stumble was coming in Fort Collins. After three straight years of playing high-level ball but leaving wins on the board — they had lost seven of 10 one-possession finishes heading into 2018 — Bobo’s Rams were pretty much guaranteed to slip. They had the least returning production in the country, and they were facing a schedule with three power conference opponents.

Circumstances got even dicier. First, Bobo spent 10 days in the hospital during fall camp, dealing with what doctors called “peripheral neuropathy” — numbness in the arms and legs. He spent the first game of the season in the press box and ceded play-calling duties for five games. He was back to something resembling full-strength by midseason, but the damage had been done. CSU looked rudderless during a 1-4 start.

To make matters worse, just about everybody else in the MWC got better while the Rams were getting worse.

CSU ended up 3-9 and 102nd in S&P+. They should have taken at least one of the final two games of the year — their postgame win expectancy was above 50 percent in losses to both Utah State and Air Force, and it took a negated last-second touchdown to fall to USU — but no matter what, the year was even worse than expected.

Bobo retained almost all of his staff for once and should be in his normal role. He’s worked on extra leadership initiatives in this offseason.

There are still offensive issues, however. After falling from 31st to 81st in Off. S&P+, the Rams are projected to fall even further because the skill corps got nuked — receivers Preston Williams and Bisi Johnson are both gone after combining for 2,141 yards, and leading rusher Izzy Matthews departs as well. Plus, only two of seven linemen with starting experience return. Quarterback Collin Hill will be working with an almost completely different lineup, and he still might not get much support from his defense.

Maybe the circumstances — Bobo’s health, primarily — meant the Rams were artificially low and that their typical floor is higher. Maybe they’re primed for more of a rebound than the not-particularly-optimistic numbers suggest.

But after a few years of being a couple breaks away from a big-time breakthrough, CSU now might need some breaks just to get back to the postseason.

Coordinator Dave Johnson’s first season at CSU was, per S&P+, CSU’s worst offensive season since 2012.

You can’t necessarily blame him for that, not when Bobo basically serves as his own de-facto coordinator, and not when CSU’s personnel was at its most questionable state in years.

For starters, the Rams fell dramatically out of balance. Bobo is almost religious in his fervor for run-pass balance, but CSU ran the ball just 49 percent of the time on standard downs (120th in FBS) and 27 percent on passing downs (110th). There were two main causes for this:

The Rams were 118th in Rushing S&P+. Matthews, a decent backup for Dalyn Dawkins for years, didn’t find much running room and wasn’t very explosive when he did. Mind you, he was still more successful than backups Marvin Kinsey Jr. and Marcus McElroy, but he averaged just 4.3 yards per carry. And while the line generally avoided leaks (44th in stuff rate, 35th in sack rate), it didn’t exactly push defenders backwards.

Given the option of throwing more or basically starting every new set of downs with a second-and-9, Johnson and Bobo opened things up a bit.

Carta-Samuels started out well, completing 64 percent of his passes with a 9-to-3 TD-to-INT ratio in the first four games, but he threw five interceptions, with just a 57 percent completion rate, over the next four. Collin Hill came in during a shootout loss to Boise State and went 12-for-14 for 135 yards. He started from that point forward.

Hill was the presumptive successor for Nick Stevens heading into 2018, but he tore his ACL early in the offseason. He was abysmal as a substitute early, and even over four starts he had five TDs to six INTs and a merely decent 61 percent completion rate. But he started connecting vertically with Williams and Johnson over the final two games, completing 29 of 42 passes for 520 yards to the duo in the near-wins over USU and Air Force.

Warren Jackson had five catches for 69 yards in those two late games, too, plus nine for 105 against Boise State. That’s important because he’s now the returning receiving leader.

Jackson did next to nothing in the first half of his freshman season and missed three games last year. In the 15 games in which he’s been a major contributor, he’s caught 47 balls for 670 yards and four touchdowns. He’ll be asked to contribute at least that in 12 games this fall.

Granted, this is the CSU receiving corps. Someone always steps up. The Rams have had a 1,000-yard receiver for five straight years, and recent stars like Rashard Higgins (66 catches for the Browns in 2017-18) and Michael Gallup (33 for the Cowboys last year) have more than held their own in the pros.

At 6’6, 219 pounds, Jackson looks the part of a pro prospect, but there are other breakthrough candidates, too. Sophomore Nikko Hall, for instance, was one of the most-touted recruits CSU has ever signed, and three more mid-three-star freshmen will be in town this fall. But you have to figure Nate Craig-Myers will have a chance.

The Auburn transfer, who might have to sit the first few games (until it’s officially been a year since he last played for Auburn), caught 22 passes for 394 yards and four touchdowns in parts of three seasons on the Plains. He is a former top-50 recruit, and the sooner he can make a splash, the better.

You don’t figure either Bobo or Johnson will be satisfied until there’s some semblance of balance again, though, and it’s hard to predict that will happen. McElroy’s a junior and former star recruit, and while Kinsey did very little on the ground, he did catch 22 of 23 passes at 8.9 yards per target. He’s got athleticism. Incoming freshman Tyreese Jackson was one of the stars of CSU’s 2019 class, too. But none have proved anything in the run game yet, and the line is starting over.

Guards Barry Wesley and Jeff Taylor do return after logging 22 starts between them last year. Taylor missed spring ball with surgery, and only two of the players who finished the spring on the first string have even played in a game, much less started. This unit is super young, and while the Rams almost can’t get worse at creating holes, they can definitely get worse at allowing negative plays.

Coordinator John Jancek’s first season at CSU was, per S&P+, CSU’s worst defensive season since ... well, it depends on your criteria.

The Rams’ 36.7 adjusted points per game allowed and 14.5-percent percentile rating were their worst since 2010. Their No. 110 ranking was their worst since 1981.

Either way: really bad.

CSU was bad at pretty much everything: 119th in Rushing S&P+, 118th in Passing S&P+, 123rd in Standard Downs S&P+, 105th in Passing Downs S&P+. They were decent at preventing big run plays, but you could get five yards any time you wanted them. They were pretty good on third-and-short but couldn’t force thirds-and-shorts — in fact, you typically didn’t have to wait till third down to move the chains.

But hey, on the bright side, there’s almost nowhere to go but up!

More bright side: the Rams might have something closer to a full-strength lineup this year.

Linebacker Max McDonald made it only four games into 2018 after showing starter potential in 2017. Tackle Richard King made it only two games in, and LB Patrick Moody missed the whole year.

The front seven was even less experienced than expected, in other words. Sophomores Ellison Hubbard and Emmanuel Jones combined for 13.5 TFLs while tossed into the deep end, and freshmen like LBs Cam’Ron Carter and Dequan Jackson and DT Devin Phillips got a lot of reps, too. In the secondary, three freshmen saw quite a bit of action, too.

So now its all-hands-on-deck time.

Jancek never had a chance last year. Most of the players on this year’s defense could be underclassmen, which could be good for 2020 but could also be a sign that only so much growth is in the cards in 2019.

The Rams were fifth in Special Teams S&P+ in 2017 and plummeted all the way to 104th. Ryan Stonehouse’s punts were fine, but Wyatt Bryan was only 11-for-18 on field goals and missed three PATs, and the return game provided next to nothing. Stonehouse is back, and the rest of the unit will have new blood. Not necessarily a bad thing.

In terms of raw recruiting rankings, Bobo has proved he can stockpile pretty good talent. But his good seasons featured twinges of disappointment, and extenuating circumstances were the only reasons not to call last year a disaster.

S&P+ isn’t designed to take those circumstances into account and simply sees a team that collapsed last year, then lost a healthy chunk of its offensive production. It therefore projects the Rams to fall even further, to 109th. They are favored in only two games, and one of them is by .03 points at New Mexico.

I doubt it gets that bad, but with a schedule that features five projected top-60 opponents (plus two more in the top 80), the Rams could overachieve their projections by a good amount and still struggle to reach 6-6.

Bobo’s in a tight spot. He’s now under .500 over four seasons, and neither of his latest coordinator hires has worked out (yet). There is raw talent here, but with this schedule, in this conference, the Rams will need one hell of a rebound just to get back to the right side of .500.

All 2019 preview data to date.