Those football fans who witnessed Colorado State's 35-33 victory over Air Force last year may want to come prepared for another shootout Saturday.
Both teams have demonstrated they can score and both have shown they can be scored upon.Colorado State had 448 yards of total offense last week in its 38-24 victory over Arkansas State, but the Rams defense gave up 315 yards.
Air Force's defense was even more generous.
The Falcons amassed 610 yards against Weber State in a 48-31 victory, but gave up 621 yards.
It'll be the 30th meeting of the in-state and conference rivals with Air Force holding a 19-9-1 edge.
"I think it's a possibility the game will go down to the team that has the ball last again," said CSU coach Earle Bruce. "And I hope we have it."
CSU coach Earle Bruce blamed bad tackling. Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry blamed the opposing quarterback - Weber State passing whiz Jamie Martin. Martin accounted for 356 of his team's 453 aerial yards against the Falcons.
"We know we're a better defensive team than we showed last week," DeBerry said. "Our opponent had something to do with it. Martin is one of the better quarterbacks ever to play in Falcon Stadium. We didn't make anything happen on defense, which concerns me the most."
Air Force failed to force a single turnover against Weber State.
"We're going to have to be better tacklers against Air Force than we were (against Arkansas State)," said Bruce, "and we can't make mistakes in our kicking game like fumbling the kickoff and roughing the punter. We can't let those things happen."
On offense, both teams have experienced quarterbacks and fine running backs.
Rams quarterback Kevin Verdugo connected on 11 of 19 passes for 144 yards and two touchdowns last week while Air Force quarterback Rob Perez ran for 148 yards - his personal best - and two touchdowns and passed for another 106 and a touchdown.
DeBerry points to other similarities:
"Both teams have six offensive and five defensive starters back," he said. "They both have some good backs. They both have three of their four secondary people back. They have a great kicker in Mike Brown, and we have a pretty fair country kicker in Joe Wood. Both teams blocked kicks in the game last year."
DeBerry believes his defensive team will be better prepared against CSU.
"We had never played Weber before, and we didn't really know what to expect," he said.