Air Force rolls over CSU for 5th straight win

After consecutive games in which "3 yards and a cloud of dust" might have been a generous description of the Air Force offense, big plays made a return to the Falcons' arsenal Saturday night.

In a 38-17 victory over Colorado State in front of an announced crowd of 39,052, Air Force scored on a 74-yard pass from freshman quarterback Tim Jefferson to sophomore receiver Kyle Halderman and runs of 41 and 45 yards by freshman tailback Asher Clark. Jefferson also threw a 53-yard pass to Ty Paffett to set up the team's first score.

"We made a few big plays and that helps," coach Troy Calhoun said. "I think tonight we had some gains that were larger than 10 (yards), which we haven't had a whole lot of those recently."

In their previous two games - against New Mexico and Army - the Falcons' longest play from scrimmage was 21 yards. They had five plays of 25 yards or more Saturday - in part because of a much less conservative game plan.

"This evening was a night where we were going to have to go push the bounds a little bit," Calhoun said.

Air Force finished with 455 yards - 53 more than it compiled in the previous two games combined. And after scoring only one offensive touchdown in each of the past two games, the Falcons had five against the Rams.

With its fifth victory in a row, Air Force improved to 8-2 and 5-1 in the Mountain West Conference. Colorado State fell to 4-6 and 2-4.

Jefferson completed 6 of 8 passes for a career-high 171 yards and two touchdowns, while Clark rushed for a career-high 136 yards and career-best two touchdowns.

The game looked like it was going to be a shootout after a wild first half in which the teams combined for 471 yards and 38 points.

But the Falcons defense made some key adjustments, began to pressure Colorado State quarterback Billy Farris and came up with a pair of critical turnovers that helped Air Force pull away.

Sophomore linebacker Ken Lamendola and sophomore cornerback Reggie Rembert picked off passes on each of the Rams' first two possessions, and the Falcons turned both of those turnovers into touchdowns.

"We kind of fell apart there a little bit in the third quarter," said first-year Colorado State coach Steve Fairchild, whose team was shut out in the second half after scoring 17 in the first half and 80 in its previous two games. "We made some bad decisions. We missed a couple of things protection-wise and ended up turning the ball over a couple of times and that's all it took for this thing to get out of hand."

Not being able to stop Air Force's offense didn't help.

The Falcons scored on three of their four possessions in the second half. The only possession they didn't finish with a score was their last, when they drove 70 yards in 14 plays to bleed the final 9 minutes, 21 seconds off the clock.

"Our offense struggled the past couple of weeks, but this week we were able to make some changes in the game plan and were able to attack them in their weak spots," Jefferson said.

"Coach let us open it up a little bit and let us show what we can do. So hopefully in the upcoming weeks we can do that some more because we're probably going to have to."