Jim Mora Fires Colorado State DC Tyson Summers Mid-Game During 56-26 Loss to Oregon State

FORT COLLINS — College football coaches usually wait for the final whistle — or at least for Sunday morning — to fire a coordinator. Colorado State head coach Jim Mora didn't wait for either. With his defense getting shredded in the first half of Saturday's 56-26 loss to Oregon State at Canvas Stadium, Mora relieved defensive coordinator Tyson Summers of his play-calling duties on the spot. Summers walked off the field. After the game, Mora made the rest official: "Tyson was relieved of his play-calling duties. He left the field, and he is no longer with this football program. That is permanent."

THE MOMENT — The change came early. Sideline reporter Dalen Cuff said associate head coach and defensive line coach Kenny McClendon had been calling plays since about midway through the first quarter, and that Summers hadn't been seen on the sideline since the first quarter, per the Coloradoan via Fox Sports. The Beavers were up 14-0 before some fans had found their seats, led 35-14 at halftime, and kept scoring — 14 points in the first quarter, 21 in the second, 21 more after halftime. Mora said Summers made the decision to leave on his own: "He made the decision on his own to leave the field," per Fox Sports. Either way, his tenure ended in the tunnel, not in the locker room.

THE NUMBERS — This is what got a man fired before halftime. Oregon State finished with 650 yards of total offense — 223 on the ground and 427 through the air, per Reuters — as Beavers quarterback Braden Atkinson went 31-of-34 for five touchdowns. USA Today had the Rams surrendering 639 yards at 9.0 yards per play, with Oregon State averaging 14.1 yards per completion. It was the second straight week of historic damage: Colorado State has allowed at least 50 points in back-to-back games for the first time since 1984, per USA Today, after a 59-45 loss to UTSA in which the Rams gave up 542 yards. The week before that, BYU ran for 332 yards against them, per Bleacher Report. The Rams entered Saturday allowing 34.3 points per game, 129th in the nation, per Fox Sports. That number is going up.

MCCLENDON'S TURN — The new voice is a familiar one to Mora. Kenny McClendon, the associate head coach and defensive line coach who had been serving as co-defensive coordinator, spent the previous four seasons as Mora's defensive line coach at UConn before following him to Fort Collins, per USA Today. Mora confirmed McClendon will be the primary defensive play-caller for the rest of the season, and he liked what little he saw under fire: "He was put in a very difficult situation and he responded well and the players responded well," Mora said. "Very first play he called as a defensive coordinator in his entire life was a sack, caused fumble. We're going to get better. We're going to get a lot better. He's a good football coach." Cornerbacks coach Trent Matthews handled signaling the calls in to the defense after the switch, per USA Today.

THE BACKSTORY — Summers, 46, is a well-traveled defensive mind — first a coordinator at UCF (2012-14), then a season as Colorado State's DC in 2015, a two-year head coaching stint at Georgia Southern, DC stops at Colorado (2019-20) and Western Kentucky (2022-24), before returning to Fort Collins in 2025 under Jay Norvell, per Reuters. When Norvell was fired seven games into last season, Summers took over as interim coach and the Rams went 0-5. Mora — hired last fall from UConn, where he rebuilt the program over four seasons, and previously the head coach at UCLA and in the NFL with the Falcons and Seahawks — kept Summers on staff. It was a short marriage, and the divorce had been foreshadowed: during the Week 4 loss to UTSA, television cameras caught Mora angrily confronting Summers on the sideline, per the New York Post, and Mora spent the week publicly demanding the defense be simplified. "Players at any level, regardless of intelligence, can only comprehend so much in a football game. It's chaos," Mora told reporters before the Oregon State game, per Bleacher Report. "When you get in situations where your players aren't playing fast because they're not certain, it's critically important that you shrink the package." On Saturday, the players still weren't playing fast.

WHAT IT MEANS — Let's be clear about one thing: this is not about Mora's job. He's four months into a rebuild of a program that hasn't finished above .500 since 2017, per Reuters, and Saturday was his Pac-12 opener. But the timing and the manner of it — a coordinator fired in the first quarter of a home game — is a message to everyone left in the building: the grace period is over, the standard is the standard, and no one is safe while the defense gives up 650 yards. Mora didn't bring Summers to Fort Collins; he inherited him, and five games into the season he decided the inheritance wasn't worth keeping. For the Rams, now 2-3 after a 2-0 start with three straight losses giving up an average of 52 points, per Bleacher Report, the season pivots on whether McClendon can do what Summers couldn't: get eleven players on the same page before the next offense does the same thing Oregon State just did. Follow the rebuild on Previously's college football hub.