There are bad starts, and then there are starts that force a sideline change before the first quarter is over. Colorado State’s Saturday night loss to Oregon State fell into the second category, with Tyson Summers seemingly replaced as the Rams’ defensive play caller after a disastrous opening stretch in Canvas Stadium.
The change came during CSU’s inaugural Pac-12 matchup of the 2026 season, and it arrived quickly enough to say something important about how the night was going. Oregon State piled up nearly 400 more first-half yards and scored five touchdowns in the first 30 minutes, turning the game into a 35-14 halftime hole before Colorado State could stabilize anything.
A defensive reset arrived fast
Summers had been elevated to co-defensive coordinator back in the spring, but by Saturday night Kenny McClendon was the new voice handling the defense. The source indicates Summers was not seen again with the coaches who returned to the post ahead of the third quarter, which makes the in-game shift hard to miss even without an official public explanation.
That matters because it points to more than just a poor quarter. Colorado State had already come off an atrocious defensive performance against UTSA, so this was not an isolated breakdown. It was the kind of sequence that suggests the staff felt it needed to change the command structure immediately, not wait for halftime or for the numbers to improve on their own.
The scoreboard told part of the story, but the larger issue was how quickly Oregon State separated from CSU in every phase that mattered. When a defense is giving up explosive production that early, the problem is usually not one assignment or one missed tackle. It is the accumulation of space, tempo and confidence all breaking in the same direction.
Whether Summers was formally stripped of the role or simply replaced in practice, the result was the same: McClendon took over the play-calling duties, and Colorado State spent the night trying to stop a game that had already gotten away from it. In a season-opening Pac-12 showcase, that is not the kind of message any staff wants to send. But it is the kind of message a game like this can force.
