Strike 1: Ten years ago, Tyson Summers signed on to be the new defensive coordinator for head coach Mike Bobo’s Colorado State Rams. At the time, he was well aware that Bobo was implementing a fast-paced, hurry up no-huddle offense, which makes coaching and playing defense a whole lot tougher than it already is. When your team’s offense is snapping the ball and running plays quickly, there are more offensive possessions and snaps for the other team as well. There can be offensive possessions that take up just 30 seconds of game action, and your defense has to go right back on the field in the blink of an eye. Sometimes defensive units find themselves playing 90 or more snaps in a single game. It can be frustrating and exhausting for even the most talented units.

Now, a decade later, Summers returns to Fort Collins that much more experienced, and after having been the head coach at Georgia Southern and the DC at the University of Colorado among his multiple coaching stops since 2015. He has refined his approach to coaching defense in this era, and is ready for his second stint calling the defenses at CSU – regardless of his team’s offensive game plan. This time he’s working for head coach Jay Norvell – no stranger to up tempo offense.

“I really view it a lot differently than I used to,” Summers reflected back during this year’s CSU Media day. “We’ve really kind of adapted our defense, and it really started in 2019 and 2020 when I was at CU.”

In 2019, the Buffs under new coach Mel Tucker were featuring a more standard, pro-style offense. That changed before the COVID challenged 2020 season under Karl Dorrell and his new offensive coordinator, Darrin Chiaverini. Chiaverini planned to run – and did during the limited schedule – a no huddle, up tempo attack.

“Darrin was as tempo as tempo could be,” Summers recalled. “So I really became more about how do I play into this system, how do we go win games?”

It became all about “Nine Knockouts.”

Summers explains it like this: “If we were going to play 12, 13, 14 series a game defensively, we want to be able to get nine – any version of takeaways, three-and-outs, forcing a field goal try or fourth down stops. Over the course of that time since 2020, I think we’ve only lost two games where we had nine knockouts, and we’ve only won one when we didn’t.”

After leaving CU, Summers spent a season as a defensive analyst at Florida before landing the DC job at Western Kentucky. His Hilltoppers defensive units were stout and opportunistic, leading Conference USA in pass defense in 2024 and leading the nation in defensive touchdowns in 2022 and 2023 – scoring themselves nine times. In 2022 they led the nation in turnovers created.

Knockouts.

“You’ve got to build a defense that does that,” Summers added. “We try to play defense like the offense would, we try to think about the plan and take some things away. We try to force them into a narrow box. We carry enough things in our (defensive) package to be able to say that we have answers for any offense.”

Whether or not Norvell’s offense returns to his “air raid” concepts or not – and conventional wisdom is that CSU is more likely than not to remain a “run-first” style of offense for the coming season – Summers has a defensive concept that’s devised to work with any style offense from a grind it out, “three yards and a cloud of dust” running game to a wide open, no-huddle spread passing attack.

“At the end of the day, it’s just about points,” Summers sums up. “If we give up 28, but we created 17, meaning you basically held somebody to 10 or 11 points on offense, you feel pretty good about that game.”

As long as the defense is getting those knockouts.