After loss to Utah State, Colorado State's Jim Mora Jr. says 'the hammer is coming down'

Colorado State coach Jim Mora Jr. was a very unhappy man after his team’s 31-14 loss at Utah State on Saturday.

A livid Mora promised that “the hammer is coming down” ahead of his team’s final four games of the season. The loss dropped Colorado State to 3-5 overall and 1-3 in the Mountain West.

As Mora said that everyone on his team from the players to the coaching staff were “lousy” against the Aggies, he was asked if there were going to be decisions on playing time coming soon and if there were certain players who might not deserve an opportunity to be on the team.

“Absolutely. There’s no chance they’ll be here. Zero chance,” Mora said. “There’s already a list and the list is getting longer. I’m not going to put up with this. I know how to turn programs around. I’ve done it four times. You do it by being — you’ve got to be freaking tough. You’ve got to be willing to make really hard decisions. As a university and as a program. So that needs to be demonstrated.”

He then went on to tout his resumé as a head coach when asked if he had been giving the right message to his players. Colorado State is his third college head coaching job after he spent three seasons as the Atlanta Falcons head coach in the 2000s.

“Obviously I haven’t been,” Mora said. “So it’s confounding to me because I searched high and low and it’s worked a lot of places and it’s worked really well. Really well.

“But it’s everybody. It’s everybody. It’s the university too. There are tough decisions. If you want to win, you’ve better make those decisions … and if you don’t you are not going to win. Period. I got 42 years of doing this. I think I know. I watched my dad turn around the New Orleans Saints, they never had a winning season ever. I watched his formula. I watched him go to the Indianapolis Colts and turn around that franchise and go 13- and win 10 games more than they did the year before, his second year there.

“I went to the Atlanta Falcons, turned them around. Went to UCLA, we turned them around. Went to UConn, we turned them around. You can call me arrogant. I know what I’m doing.”

Mora is in his first season at Colorado State after four seasons at UConn. He took the Huskies’ job after a stint at ESPN following his six-year tenure at UCLA. UConn won nine games in each of his final two seasons in Storrs.

This Colorado State team may not even get bowl eligible as it navigates its first season in the Pac-12. The Rams have No. 20 Boise State on Saturday before two consecutive road games. Mora has been a frustrated man at numerous points during the season, too. During a blowout loss to Oregon State on Oct. 3, he parted ways with defensive coordinator Tyson Summers in the middle of the game. The Beavers had scored 35 first-half points before Summers didn’t return to the sidelines for the second half.

Monday, Mora was much calmer as he discussed how the final month of the season would be an evaluation period of sorts for his team in 2027.

“If you’re approaching this job correctly, every day you’re trying out for your job, you know? Really, as a player, as a coach, as a staff member, every day — if you have the right mindset, every day is just as important as any other day,” Mora said. “And sometimes with younger people it’s hard to get them to understand that. You don’t start to truly understand that until you get a little bit older. So just impressing upon them the fact that you have to prove it every day, you know?”