Full rebuild: Jay Norvell has turned over almost the full CSU football roster as Year 2 begins
The restless nights were frequent for Jay Norvell in the first month of his inaugural season as Colorado State’s football coach.
His team was listless, beaten easily and not responding how he desired in the earliest days of the rebuild of a broken program.
One day he sat frustrated in his driveway and picked up the phone. He called staffers Jordon Simmons (strength and conditioning coach) and Jeremy Copeland (director of player development), two who spend as much time as anyone with players.
"'What’s the matter with this team? I don’t feel them?’” Norvell asked. "When you’re a head coach and you talk to your team and you can’t feel them, there’s something wrong."
Norvell says now that in the start of the rebuild too many players from previous staffs were relied on when, in his mind, they shouldn’t have been. Defections came fast and furious in the first month of the season as players transferred out seeking a fresh start elsewhere.
It took a month into the season for the roster to settle into a group Norvell felt comfortable with and confident in.
"We had a lot of guys that weren’t committed to it. When those guys left, we played Nevada and that’s the first time all year that I felt like we were a team," Norvell said. "I felt like we fought for each other and we went through a really tough, hard road game. I think from that point on we just battled."
An emotional, hard-fought win over Nevada (Norvell’s former team) brought his first win and the signs of a roster trending in toward his vision.
Now Norvell begins Year 2 (at 5 p.m. Saturday at Canvas Stadium against Washington State) and it's a roster almost entirely built in the vision of Norvell and his staff.
There are 112 players currently on the roster. Only 19 of them were on the roster at the end of the Steve Addazio era (and just 12 are scholarship players), according to CSU.
Of those holdovers, most are star players who any coach and any system would want (such as Mohamed Kamara, Jack Howell and Henry Blackburn).
Only one player from the 2021 offense (Brian Crespo-Jaquez) remains on the roster.
It isn’t to say the roster is complete, but it’s now built in Norvell’s vision.
"I think we definitely know these players better and I think these players are more a reflection of us. It’s a fun group to come out and coach every day," Norvell said. "It just means the world as a coach when you have a bunch of guys like that that you like being around every day."
It’s not to say there won’t be transfers out (that’s a given in the portal era), but Norvell and staff feel much better about the roster fits, depth and size. Norvell says the roster is an inch taller across the board.
It’s a huge rebuild underway, but Norvell quickly flipped the roster and now feels it’s headed in the right direction.
"We’ve got guys that are super excited to be at CSU. We have guys that are looking at this season as an opportunity of a lifetime and something they’ve been working on for years. I can feel and understand this group much better," Norvell said.
"I have a lot more comfort in our team. We have more leaders, more older players that are really dependable people that are consistent people."
Follow sports reporter Kevin Lytle on Twitter and Instagram @Kevin_Lytle.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Jay Norvell has turned over almost the full CSU football roster as Year 2 begins
