Coming Together, Piece by Piece
Pace laying foundation for offensive line room
Mike Brohard
Eventually they will all want to get to the same place. See the assignment the same way. Blend the individual tasks into a group project which flows in perfect unison.
But from the jump, they were a collection of pieces brought together from places near and far. Those who were already on hand held the role of information broker, because every now and then an offensive lineman needs a quality slice of pie.
“I love Phil. He's been really good about that,” Quinton Harris said of Phillip Ocon. “Pizza places … There's a lot of restaurants around here. I think every restaurant around here has been really good. Anything that he's told me has been really good. Yeah, he's been really good, I love Phil.”
Ocon knows. He’s been here for a couple of years, starting two of the final games of the 2025 season as the Rams’ center, appearing in eight games total. Change can be hard – even as a returner he’s experienced it at Colorado State.
New coach at the top. New coach in the room. New teammates filling out that room. And they get hungry. Gotta keep the weight on, so when they came to him for suggestions, there was no hesitation. It comes with the territory of being a center. Can’t be hesitant when decisions need to be made, information dispersed.
“Man, there's a lot of good pizza spots around here, but it's gotta be Cosmo's,” he said. “It's gotta be Cosmo's, you know what I'm saying? It's open till 2 in the morning. Ever since I got on campus, that was my spot, so definitely Cosmo's.
“I'm the center, so the offense kind of runs through me and the quarterback. I gotta make all the calls and stuff, so making sure everyone's on the same page is huge. And bringing everyone along, no matter how new, where they come from, it's they gotta be fresh and they gotta be here. We're as strong as our weakest link, and it's a real, real big responsibility.”
On the field, too. Again, it’s his job in the middle to bring the pairings on either side of him together, have them move as one. To create a gap for the running back. To build a wall for the quarterback.
He may be a returner, but he’s new to this, too, so he’s been on top of what Christian Pace, the offensive line coach, wants.
“I definitely try to take pride in making sure that all the guys know what they're doing, and that when they get out on the field, they're confident,” he said. “And that's my call, let's go run and play hard.”
Pace is being asked to build an offensive line from scratch, a group put together via the transfer portal and a few returners, even from the high school ranks.
Besides Ocon, Kentez Allen is a young returner, as is John Holthaus, Berlin Lillard, Zach Smith, Braden Hales and Sione Netane, with Smith and Hales seeing time as reserves. They hit the portal for Harris, Payton Stewart, Jayden Tuia, Toriyan Johnson and Diego Rodriguez; Johnson and Rodriguez know Pace and his approach from Connecticut. Max Vivier is a true freshman getting an early start.
More are coming in the future, but in the course of 15 spring sessions, Pace needs to lay the groundwork for the pillars he wants to hold the structure – and thus, the offense – together.
“You start with the fundamentals. Obviously, we're bringing in seven new guys here at midyear, and another six in May with high school guys and another transfer from junior college. It has to start with fundamentals and literally just teaching -- here's how we call defense, here's our techniques, here's our basic play, here's what we're going to hang our hat on and just drill, drill, drill,” Pace said. “And just continue to focus on one thing until we get really good at it and move on to the next phase. And that way we build from a good foundation. But without that foundation, it's hard to build.”
We want to just be a group that's viewed as being tough, rugged, disciplined, and well-coached, and that plays hard.Christian Pace
A collection from all over. By the end of April, Harris says it can’t feel that way.
To come together on the field, they need to be together as a group. A lot. That includes way from Canvas Stadium.
“I noticed in my recent years of playing football, it takes time to be a tight team. As an offensive lineman, you got the tightest group on the team and you kind of want to stick to that and making sure that we’ve got each other,” he said. “Coach Pace does a great job of getting us in here and with the meetings and getting the plays together, but it's our job to meet up outside of that and come as a tight knit group. So the team needs us to be there for them.
“I don't know what anyone else would say, but 100%, if you're meeting up outside of this, going on walks, just going out … We’ve got a beautiful view. I've never been around mountains, but I went out there with a couple of teammates and that's been a blast. I've gotten to know everyone to a certain level. Then we'll always go out to dinner or a restaurant sometime this week. It's all good, being big boys, just eating and coming out here and working.”
Harris is a Texas kid who spent four seasons at TCU. The sights at Horsetooth Reservoir were spectacular to him, and he can’t wait to see more. The trip was in the evening, a bunch of them together with others, watching the sun set.
To Ocon, it was more than a scenic trip with a captivating finish.
“I absolutely am on the same page with him. Q's a great guy -- real, real fun dude in the locker room and in the offensive line room,” Ocon said. “And there isn't really a single guy in the O-line room or really on this team that you can't say, ‘hey man, let's go hang out.’
“Hey, you got your position room, let's go hang out with the O-lineman. You know what I mean? So the O-lineman, we definitely get together a lot together and hang out. It's huge just being around these guys, knowing their story, knowing what makes them tick, knowing what their family's like. All those things are big for sure.”
Cohesion off the field helps when it comes time to practice. Somebody to count on when a play is called, someone to go to when the message isn’t clear.
Some of them came from far away to be here, and now that they are, Pace says they still have a long road to travel with only four practices in the book.
“Right now we're a long way away. Obviously, we're still worrying on getting in our stance and snapping the ball,” Pace said. “We want to just be a group that's viewed as being tough, rugged, disciplined, and well-coached, and that plays hard. And we are a long, long way from that, but it's a new group.
“We have a little bit of time, but the urgency is there. We just have to increase the execution with that urgency.”
In the spring, different combinations will line up together, and that will be good, because during a season, rarely do the same five starters spent the entire 12-game regular season in perfect health. It’s a chance to understand individual nuances and for Pace to see how they work together, who has flexibility among the positions a player can fill.
Through it all, other key aspects will take shape. Leaders are needed in the room as well as among the offense in it’s entirety. Pace has made it clear to his room they will be effective and through that, the offense will not just run the ball but do so with authority.
That’s not up for discussion. To do so, his group has to come together.
Having some experience is good. Having some inexperience doesn’t have to be viewed as negative.
“That's the biggest void right now for our group is we have a lot of younger players, some with some experience, some with absolutely none, which to me is a good thing because you have a lot of guys who have very few poor habits, but they also don't understand how to piece everything together as one,” Pace said. “But we do have some leadership as far as a guy like Ocon. People listen to him because he's always doing things the right way. He's been really good to come in and have already in place because he's kind of the glue of all the new people and everybody who was here, and he's been a really, really good resource for me to have.
“Then also bringing in guys like Quentin Harris. At TCU, he had like 450 snaps. He's our most experienced guy. And then we have everywhere in between that all the way down to zero snaps. So we're a long way away. But, yeah, we want to be tough. We're all good at this point and we'll coach and play hard.”
This is a group at sunrise, just starting to rise up and provide the light. Like the sunset they viewed together, they expect to be a radiant part of the game plan, the group which can lead a 4-minute drill at the end and put a win to bed.
They’ll bring it together in the weight room, in study sessions in the offensive line room and as a group on the field. Just as important, they need to do it away from the grind, possibly sitting at a table taking apart a Cosmo’s pizza – or three -- piece by piece.
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