FORT COLLINS — Before the wing, there was the prayer. A gentle hand tap on each shoulder, followed by a right hand to the forehead, down to the belly, over to the left shoulder, then to the right.
“Be ready,” CSU wideout Tory Horton warned Rams tight end Dallin Holker once he recognized the signals from the sideline, “for the (expletive) tip.”
Holker was (expletive) ready.
The Holy Holker, on paper, became immaculately conceived as “Early Bunch (Cross Yourself) Hail Mary.” Horton, limping with joy inside the bowels of Canvas Stadium, simulated the call for me on a Sunday morning that saw CSU’s football season rise from the dead.
The first hand signal, the shoulder taps, indicated a “bunch” formation. The next was a more familiar signal to The Man Upstairs.
“All the glory has to go to God,” Rams coach Jay Norvell said of the 33-yard, game-ending Hail Mary that cinched CSU 31, Boise State 30, the greatest moment of an 18-game tenure and his program’s first-ever victory over the biggety, barbarous Broncos. “God had His hands all over us (Saturday) night.”
The other hands belonged to Boise defender Jaylen Clark, a 6-foot-2 safety who was sandwiched by CSU’s Louis Brown IV behind, Horton in front, outleaping them both in the back of the end zone as quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi threw caution to the October wind.
Clark slapped the ball to the turf, and that was supposed to be that. Only Holker, posting up in front of the pile, read the tip perfectly. The Utah native dove onto his right knee, reached down with two big mitts and cradled Rams immortality into his 235-pound bosom.
“This is the kind of thing we’re capable of doing,” said Norvell, whose squad heads to upstart UNLV (5-1) this weekend with a 3-3 record, its first Mountain West win of the year, and smiles from Laporte to Loveland. “When people come to the games, we want them at the edge of their seats, wondering what they’re going to see.”
After the game, in an incredibly rare moment of collegiate curtain-raising, CSU opened its locker room celebration up to the heathen media. We watched, cellphones held high, as Norvell turned his trademark visor backward, leapt into a circle of adoring players and danced his Logan, Utah, blues away.
“And I love it for our fan base,” the CSU coach continued, “that we can get this (Boise losing) streak behind us and start some new streaks of our own. And I think it’s really going to be fun going forward.”
Norvell is due for some fun. Overdue, now that you mention it. One of football’s good guys, the Wisconsin native got caught in the comet trail of Deion Sanders Mania, the right coach with the wrong rival at the wrong time.
When he dared to clap back at Coach Prime, Sanders’ sycophants howled with indignation. When Henry Blackburn hit Travis Hunter late, complete strangers branded him as a dirty coach at a dirty program.
Neither was remotely true. But after CSU painfully gagged away leads against Sanders’ CU Buffs and at Utah State, some Rams faithful — Norvell’s career record in FoCo sat at 5-12 before the Holy Holker — needed convincing, too.
Even the most Stalwart of green and gold vote with their feet. And after the hosts trailed 30-10 with 6:12 left in the tilt, all but a few fans had long since skedaddled from Pitkin Street. In doing so, they missed a flurry of 21 straight CSU points in about four minutes; a successful onside kick that set up one scoring drive; and a defensive stop with 33 seconds left on the clock that fueled another.
“I guarantee you,” Norvell laughed later, “there’ll be more that said they were here than were actually here.”
They stormed the field anyway after 31-year-old Jordan Noyes’ extra point, dozens soaking in a signature win and Norvell’s signature moment. To paraphrase a certain coach in Boulder, the Rams believe again.
“I woke up really confident this morning,” Norvell said, just before tossing another subtle jab in Coach Prime’s direction. “I heard some of the scores from (Friday) night. That helped my confidence a little bit and put a smile on my face.”
Especially this one score from just down the road. Stanford went to Sanders’ house late Friday, got ambushed, and trailed 29-0 at the half. But the Cardinal chipped away while CU turtled. The Buffs went on to lose in double overtime, 46-43.
That choke job was setting up to be the highlight of many a Rammie fan’s weekend. Until 24 hours later, when CSU did Stanford one better.
“There’s no doubt, you’ve got to have a game like this to break through,” Norvell continued.
“And it does wonders for everybody’s confidence — coaches, players and everybody. Everybody just starts walking with a little different kind of confidence and they believe in each other a little more … that’s what we had (when I played) at Iowa. We had that kind of love for one another. And that takes you a long ways in close games.”
Andy Avalos’ Broncos, meanwhile, got exactly what they deserved: A scarlet “L” to stick in the middle of that beastly blue turf, a posterization for posterity.
Social media went out of its way to paint the Rams as malicious thugs after the Blackburn-Hunter incident. CSU behaved like Boy Scouts compared to some of the garbage Boise pulled on Saturday night.
When Horton wasn’t held, he was stepped on or tripped. The nadir came early in the third quarter, when Broncos linebacker Chase Martin brutally blindsided CSU’s Kennedy McDowell on the opening kickoff of the second half.
McDowell went the hospital. Martin stayed in the game. The Rams, trailing 17-0 at the time, decided they’d had enough.
“There (were) a lot of things that went on during the game, but there’s no question that our team was fighting hard for each other and rallying behind Kennedy and some of our other guys,” said Norvell, who dedicated a game ball to the absent McDowell. “But there’s no question that that was one of the rallying points.
“Some streaks die hard. I mean, that (Boise streak) was one that died hard. And I knew we’d beat them. I just didn’t know when — and I was hoping it was gonna be (Saturday). I did know that we had the guys in that locker room that were capable of beating them if we did the right things.”
Real life is about mitigating the incompletions. The Hail Marys that harmlessly hit the ground, the prayers that never get answered in real time. When one does, brother, you dance. Like no one’s watching but the angels above.
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