Throughout the offseason, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders and numerous players praised the efforts of the revamped strength and conditioning program.
Hired last winter, Andreu Swasey is leading the Buffs’ strength and conditioning team, and his workouts were reportedly difficult but produced tremendous results, including several players transforming their bodies.
In the first test of that work on Friday night, though, the results weren’t what the Buffs had hoped for coming into the season. Georgia Tech was the more physically prepared team and left Folsom Field with a 27-20 victory.
With the game tied at 20, Georgia Tech took over possession at its own 39-yard line with 2 minutes, 51 seconds to play, and won the game with a quick, five-play drive that was all on the ground. It was capped by Yellow Jackets quarterback Haynes King going 45 yards for the game-winning touchdown run.
King ran into a mass of bodies at the line that included eight CU defenders. He was never touched, however, as all eight Buffs were blocked by Tech, opening a lane for King.
“We had some tremendous stops as well, but they kept going and going and going,” Sanders said of the Tech run game. “I mean, I think we were tired and exhausted, whatever — and we shouldn’t be as much as we train — on that last run, because we just didn’t look like we normally looked the whole entire game defensively.”
CU may not have looked as tired or exhausted during much of the game, but it didn’t physically match up with the Yellow Jackets defensively. Tech finished with 320 rushing yards – just shy of the 331 that CU’s former defense gave up at Kansas last year.
“Defensively, no, there’s no way you can say you’re physical and you got your butt kicked like that,” Sanders said.
Linebacker Reggie Hughes believes the Buffs have the physicality on defense to be better and that it can show up in future games.
“We’re not quite there yet (physically),” he said. “It’s really more so execution with us because we got aggressive play style players on our defense. We play fast. We get after it. It’s just executing situations.”
On a positive note from the strength side of things, the Buffs were pleased with how their offensive line performed. They rushed for 146 yards – the third-best total in Sanders’ three seasons.
“You saw the physicality that we’ve been talking about offensively on that line,” Sanders said. “So I like some things that I saw (physically), and I didn’t like some things that I saw.”
Secondary shuffle
The three leaders of CU’s secondary are cornerbacks DJ McKinney and Preston Hodge and safety Carter Stoutmire. It was no surprise that trio was on the field all night. Between them, they played 212 of a possible 213 snaps.
The rest of the secondary is a work in progress, though. RJ Johnson got the start at the second corner spot, but Teon Parks played almost as many snaps, while Tyrecus Davis saw the field, as well.
Ben Finneseth started at safety, but saw just 26 snaps before giving way to Tawfiq Byard. Terrance Love got on the field, too.
“It’s still competition everywhere on the other corner,” Sanders said. “A couple things cost us a little bit with penalties, as well. … I know going into next week it’s more definitive for what it’s going to be, and it’s going to take a good week of practice, too.”
Notable
CU was penalized just five times on Friday. Two of those, however, were against defensive backs. CU was the most penalized team in the Big 12 last year (7.7 per game) and the most penalized in the Pac-12 in 2023 (8.9 per game). … Punter Damon Greaves averaged 45.0 yards on five punts in his CU debut, including landing three inside the 20-yard line. … Last year, CU produced just 16 touchbacks in 68 kickoffs (23.5% of the time). On Friday, Buck Buchanan had touchbacks on all five kickoffs.
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