FORT COLLINS — The story was told in less than three minutes.

In reality, the gap between Colorado State and UNLV was on display over the course of just seven plays.

Trailing 21-10 coming out of halftime, the Rams defense got a dream start, forcing a punt and giving the offense great field position at the Rebels’ 33-yard line. But CSU managed to get just four yards on three plays to set up a 52-yard field goal attempt that was wide left.

Two plays after that, UNLV (7-2, 3-2 Mountain West) got its third play of 50 yards or more on a 68-yard touchdown pass from Anthony Colandrea to Troy Omeire that all but sealed a 42-10 defeat for the Rams (2-7, 1-5 MW) on Saturday night at Canvas Stadium in Fort Collins.

“We didn’t have any doubt at that point,” interim coach Tyson Summers said. “We’ve got a great group of kids, we’ve got a good group of coaches that are working through it.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to find a way to solve problems.”

Even a bye week wasn’t enough to fix a struggling CSU offense, which put up 292 yards in the game but was nowhere near as explosive as the unit on the other sideline and that was the biggest reason for another lopsided result in a season full of them at this point.

UNLV entered the game with arguably the worst defense in the Mountain West, allowing an average of 48 points over its last three games. But the Rams never looked close to a team capable of putting up that many points in front of a sparse home crowd that got smaller and smaller as the cold night wore on.

Quarterback Jackson Brousseau was in a rhythm early and even gave CSU a 7-0 lead in the first quarter on a touchdown pass to tight end Rocky Beers, but the redshirt sophomore falls to 1-5 since replacing Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi (who has since left the program) as the starter in September. 

Brousseau finished 13-for-22 passing for 153 yards and a touchdown and once again did not finish the game as redshirt freshman Darius Curry played the entire fourth quarter.

The Rams used the trio of Jalen Dupree, Lloyd Avant and Justin Marshall to rack up over 100 rushing yards, but it didn’t result in a consistent enough offensive performance. 

The loss officially knocks CSU out of bowl contention as the firing of Jay Norvell a few weeks back hasn’t done much to spark this team with a combined score of 60-17 across the two games with Summers in charge. 

The likelihood of a complete reset, barring the hopes of retaining a handful of key players, has continued to increase with each passing week. 

Just three games remain on the schedule with two straight road games at New Mexico and Boise State proceeding to the regular season finale against Air Force in Fort Collins at the end of the month.

“It’s a hard thing,” Summers said. “We’ve talked a lot about what doubt looks like. I do see growth, I do see us getting better.”