Tyson Summers Leaves the Sideline Mid-Game: Anatomy of Colorado State's Defensive Collapse

In the third quarter, while Oregon State was still carving through Colorado State's defense with short, precise passes, Tyson Summers walked off the sideline. He did not come back. Over the headset, defensive play-calling duties passed immediately to Kenny McClendon - the defensive line coach, suddenly shouldering extra responsibility while the game was still in progress. After years standing in the corridors of stadiums, I have witnessed my share of partings, but the sight of a coordinator stripped of his microphone on the field, in front of tens of thousands, remains among the harshest moments. The final scoreline - Colorado State losing 26-56 - is only the surface. What lies beneath is a defense that had already disintegrated long before the final whistle. Colorado State entered the game against Oregon State with a 2-3 record and a three-game losing streak. That is the position of a Group-of-Five program - the five smaller conferences relative to the Power conferences in NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. For such programs, every season is a balancing act between ambition and resources. The modest but most important goal is to win enough games to reach six victories and qualify for a postseason bowl. Six wins - it may not sound like much, but once you have lost three straight early in the season, that number begins to slip out of reach. Drawing on my experience tracking many small programs in similar circumstances, I see that the pressure does not come from a single loss but from the way a losing streak erodes belief. First the belief of the fans, then the belief of the administration, and finally - most dangerously - the belief of the players themselves in the system they are running. When a defense surrenders 650 yards, people tend to look for a scapegoat. But what makes this story different is not that a defensive coordinator lost his job - that happens every season. What is different is the timing: mid-game, on the sideline, while the game was still being played. Jim Mora, the head coach, made the decision. He holds near-absolute authority over his assistant staff. The fact that he pulled Summers mid-game shows something had crossed a threshold of tolerance. Mid-season partings are usually handled quietly - a 6 a.m. phone call, a short meeting, an announcement without explanation. Here, it happened publicly, almost theatrically. After the game, the staff confirmed Summers' permanent departure from the program. Now look at the data, because that is where the story is truly written. Oregon State finished the game with 650 total yards. Of that, 427 came through the air. Most serious of all is the completion rate: 31 of 34 attempts, roughly 91%. To grasp how unusual this number is, place it beside the FBS average, which typically falls around 60-65%. When a defense allows an opponent to complete nearly 91%, the problem is no longer a single mis-called play. It is a total breakdown of the ability to cover and to pressure the opposing quarterback. The first release fee of my career taught me that: a number is only a starting point, not a destination. Here too. The 650 yards and the 91% are not the cause; they are the symptom. They are the traces of something that broke earlier. When an opponent completes almost every pass, there are two possibilities. First, the defense plays deep, ceding space in front and allowing short, safe throws to be executed repeatedly. Second, the defense is utterly powerless to generate pressure, letting the opposing quarterback stand comfortably in the pocket and read the game. Both scenarios lead to the same outcome: high-percentage throws repeated until the scoreline can no longer be salvaged. I want to be clear about the limits of what I can claim. Without detailed film, I cannot determine whether it was a scheme error, a coverage error, or a tackling error. I do not want to do what many still do - look at a number and assign it a single plausible-sounding cause. But I can state one thing with high confidence: this was not bad luck. A 91% rate does not come from an opponent's fortune. It comes from a system that has broken. McClendon took over play-calling in the third quarter. His first call produced a sack-forced fumble - a rare flash. I must be blunt: one play is not a data sample. Anyone who has analyzed a game knows that a single moment cannot prove anything about a coordinator's ability. What matters more is what came after: Oregon State kept moving the ball, kept scoring, and Colorado State's defense still found no answer. The change of play-caller did not heal the fracture. It only changed who was responsible. This is the crux that the "fire the coordinator" narrative tends to obscure: the problem may be structural, not merely about the play-caller. When a defense surrenders 650 yards, the cause usually lies deeper than a single tactical decision. It may be a personnel issue - lacking players with enough speed and technique to track the passing targets. It may be an execution issue - missed tackles, beaten coverage angles. And it may also be a cultural issue - a locker room that lost belief long before the game began. McClendon holding two roles - calling defensive plays while continuing to oversee the defensive line - raises a question about execution cost. Play-calling demands absolute focus in every second. Running a specific unit also demands constant presence. When one person must carry both, attention is split, and in American football - where every second can change the game - that split can be a hidden debt. This is a concentration risk: the entire defensive responsibility rests on one person, precisely when the defense needs stability most. I want to widen the lens a little, because this story is not only about a defense. In modern American college football, an event like this spreads in several directions. It affects high-school recruiting, where players and their families always seek stability before committing. It affects the transfer portal, where current players may consider leaving when they see a program fall into chaos. And it affects the psychology of the players in the locker room themselves - those who must keep playing while knowing the coaching staff is in a state of instability. A period of stagnation taught me that listening is the most important form of transfer. And in the coming weeks, what Colorado State needs to listen to is not the criticism from outside, but what is happening inside their own locker room. Here I want to go against common intuition a little. The public's first reaction upon seeing a defense collapse is to demand the coordinator's firing. That is an understandable and satisfying reflex. But ask yourself: if the problem truly lies in personnel and structure, what does changing the play-caller solve? The honest answer is: very little. Pulling Summers mid-game carries more symbolic than tactical weight. It sends a message - that someone must be held accountable, that the staff is reacting, that frustration has reached its peak. But symbols do not stop passes. There is another possibility I cannot rule out. The timing and manner of the change - pulling an assistant off the sideline mid-game, letting him leave and not return - suggests a rupture in the relationship or a disciplinary incident, not merely a performance-based decision. Partings like this are rarely an instant reaction to one play. They are usually the culmination of a slow-burning conflict accumulated over time - over philosophy, personnel, or conduct. If so, the real story is not in the third quarter, but in the weeks before, in meetings no one minuted. And this is the point I want to stress: when the coordinator is pushed out, the most convenient scapegoat has disappeared. If the defense continues to collapse in the coming games, eyes will turn toward Jim Mora. A head coach removes a coordinator to protect himself, but if results do not improve, he becomes the target. That is the paradox of every mid-season change: it buys time, but it also narrows the margin for error. There is a financial dimension I cannot ignore, though information remains limited. In American college football, coaches typically have guaranteed-compensation (buyout) clauses in their contracts. When an assistant is terminated mid-season, the program usually owes a certain sum, sometimes paid in installments over the remaining contract term. For a Group-of-Five program already tight on budget, paying a departed coordinator - while potentially paying a replacement as well - is a genuine burden. I have no specific figure, and I will not guess. But I have enough experience to know that mid-season decisions like this are often driven by outside pressure, and pressure is never a good financial adviser. A mistake is worth it when it teaches you to protect others from that very mistake. If Colorado State learns anything from tonight, it is this: changing the play-caller does not change a defense that has lost its instincts. Behind every contract is a person asking: does this place need me? Tyson Summers received his answer, publicly and unmistakably. But that question still hangs over those who remain - McClendon with his overlapping roles, Mora with a seat beginning to warm, and the defensive players, who must walk into the next game not knowing whether the new system differs from the old. The signature is the end of the journey, but I live in the middle part no one tells. And the middle of this story has only just begun. The next game will be the real test - not for Tyson Summers, who has left, but for those who remain, who must prove this collapse was an accident, not a nature.