What did we learn from CU’s spring game?
Colorado’s spring practice period has come and gone, with 20,000+ fans piling into Folsom Field to witness CU’s Black and Gold Spring Game to get a sneak peek at the 2025 iteration of the Buffaloes. With the spring game now over, the question now begs: What did we learn from Saturday’s scrimmage?
We’ll break down our five biggest takeaways from CU’s spring game in one easy place, so you can get caught up to speed if you missed out.
1: Kaidon Salter is a legit passer.
In our roundtable preview of the spring game, the main thing that the Ralphie Report staff wanted to see was how Kaidon Salter looked throwing the football. The senior transfer from Liberty excelled with the Flames as a run-first quarterback, but questions remained about his ability as a passer.
Safe to say, Salter quieted those concerns quickly. He looked great when airing out the football. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to tell that he was even a run-first quarterback in the first place. Salter finished the day going nine of 11 on pass attempts, racking up 67 yards in our (unofficial) stat sheet.
When Salter dropped back, he looked comfortable. He displayed great accuracy and put good airtime on deep balls, along with showing urgency and putting plenty of zip on his check-downs. Most importantly, he was on the same page with his receivers and throwing very catchable balls. After Saturday, it’s probably safe to say that Salter is the frontrunner to start when that Georgia Tech game rolls around.
2: Juju Lewis still needs time.
Lewis is in a unique position as a 17-year-old true five-star freshman who could potentially start at a Power Four program. Unfortunately for CU’s quarterback of the future, it looks like he has some growing to do within the college game.
In Juju’s first outing in front of fans, he looked like a 17-year-old. That’s not a bad thing, but he looked a bit frazzled and overwhelmed during his first showing at Folsom Field, which is natural. Lewis moved through his reads a tad too quickly and left plenty of room for improvement with his accuracy and ball placement.
It wasn’t all bad for Lewis, as he had his moments, but the youngster will have a lot of development ahead of him. Getting thrown to the wolves when you should still be in high school is difficult, and his performance today shouldn’t be held against him.
Lewis still has much to learn and improve upon and there should be no doubt that he is the answer at quarterback long term, even if Salter gets the nod to start the year. His willingness and ability to learn from the more experienced guys like Salter in the quarterback room may be a deciding factor for his long-term success as a Buff.
3: Tight ends are back!
Yay! Colorado is using tight ends again!
If you watched CU football in 2024, you already know how exciting this is. Offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur quite literally outright refused to utilize tight ends in any way that involved pass catching. On Saturday, fans saw the grand return position back at Folsom Field.
Salter was targeting his tight ends early and often, dumping the ball of to the likes of Zach Atkins, Charlie Williams and Brady Kopetz. They were actually utilized in the offensive gameplay, which is a pretty significant step forward for the Buffs.
Specifically, Atkins, a transfer from Northwest Missouri State, looked good given the limited reps we saw. CU’s staff has been banking on Atkins being the guy for Colorado at tight end and that bet doesn’t look like a misplaced one. Atkins finished the game with 22 yards, all coming from one catch. Shurmur has gone on record this spring saying that he likes tight ends who are smaller and more like receivers, and Atkins fills that mold to a tee.
4: Expect to see more RPOs this year.
Last year, CU’s offense rarely called any designed quarterback runs or even movement in the pocket, which is easy to understand when you have one of the best true passers in the nation in Shedeur Sanders. The spring game showcased that with a mobile quarterback like Salter, this offense has completely removed the training wheels from 2024.
More often than not, we saw some sort of read option, RPO or designed quarterback roll-out on Saturday. Simply put, this offense is going to be much more diverse, but it will most certainly miss Shedeur’s poise in the pocket and precise accuracy.
tl;dr – expect a more diversified and multifaceted offense than last season.
5: We still have many unanswered questions about this team.
To be entirely honest, we didn’t get to see a whole lot from Colorado’s spring game. There were only about four 11-on-11 drives, which ended in a 6-6 tie, until the score got wacky when position drill points were counted.
We didn’t get to see a whole ton out of CU’s offensive or defensive line. We didn’t see any CU running backs play that could actually see meaningful playing time other than Dallan Hayden and maybe Brandon Hood. We didn’t see the incredibly deep wide receiver core show off its depth and talent fully. Many questions still remain about this upcoming season.
It’s hard to make assumptions and predictions based on around 30 minutes and four or five drives of 11-on-11 football, especially within a scrimmage. This means that this Colorado team is going to be a bit more of a wildcard headed into the season than we’ve become accustomed to in the Deion Sanders era. We’re not entirely sure what to expect this season, but that’s okay! Just buckle up and get ready for another season of Primetime.
Other notes:
- Joseph Williams, a wide receiver transfer from Tulsa, looked great. He finished with 11 receiving yards, but almost had an incredible catch in the back corner of the endzone that fully showed off his freak athleticism
- Kylan Salter, linebacker and younger brother of Kaidon Salter, looked legit when on the field. On his first two snaps, he tallied two TFLs.
- Tawfiq Byard is as advertised. The former USF safety was flying around the field and keeping Salter’s offense in check. We’ve got our Cam’ron Silmon-Craig replacement.
- Special teams were on full display at the spring game, but didn’t have an amazing showing. Sanders has given much praise to the revamped unit and wanted to show it off to the fans on Saturday. Instead, fans saw the kickers look inconsistent at best, missing just as many field goals as they made. On the bright side, new punter Damon Greaves looked incredible, and new kicker Buck Buchanan made a 60-yard field goal that would have been good from 70 yards out. If Mata and Buchanan can find their groove ahead of the season, we should be in a great spot, but work still remains to be done.