BOULDER — If you’re a CU fan, before putting another hole through the drywall, ask yourself this, right now:
Has a mulligan ever been this much fun?
Yeah, yeah, we know. Saturday notwithstanding.
Saturday? Oh, yeah. Total mess. With Gus Johnson and favorite son Joel Klatt in the house, the Buffs (4-1) laid an egg against Utah on national television, falling 38-21 after taking a 21-10 lead at the start of the second half.
Everything this CU crew had prided itself on, the Utes (2-2) did better. Fundamentals. (the Buffs committed three turnovers to Utah’s one ans were whistled for four penalties while the Utes weren’t flagged once.) Blocking. Tackling. (Tackling, especially. Mercy.)
Explosive runs. Toughness. Composure. (No Utes penalties? Seriously? On the road? In a league game? Man, Folsom Field misses y’all. Badly.)
Utah looked comfortable in the snow. The Buffs, early and late, looked as if they were trying to play football on skates.
“We were both on the same surface,” first-year CU coach Karl Dorrell said after taking his first loss in gold. “You know me better than that by now. I’m not using any excuses.”
That includes one very big one: The loss of inside linebacker Nate Landman to a gruesome right ankle injury just before halftime. Landman, the 6-foot-3, 235-pound battering ram, came into the weekend ranked No. 3 in the Pac-12 in tackles per game (9.5). Dude was cleaning up every free ball-carrier in sight.
Without No. 53 on patrol, CU gave up a whopping 145 second-half rushing yards to the Utes. Defenders whiffed as they flailed at Utah freshman tailback Ty Jordan (147 rushing yards) or simply bounced off of the Utes’ 6-foot-4 senior quarterback, Jake Bentley (240 yards passing, 31 rushing).
“I know we’re going to respond, our coaches are going to respond,” noted CU safety Derrion Rakestraw, who had seven stops but got hurdled by Utah tight end Cole Fotheringham in the second quarter. “So I’m excited to see how we come out and play next week.”
You should be, too. Because you know they’re better than that. Dorrell knows they’re better than that. More to the point, they know they’re better than that, too.
“That’s not the best we can play,” Rakestraw continued.
If you’re a CU fan, ask yourself this before you pull the rip cord on this squad and 2020:
If some fella in July had offered you a winning season — the worst this team can finish is 4-3, in all likelihood, if it would somehow lose out — in Dorrell’s first season, no questions asked, you’d have bitten his arm off.
If he’d promised you that in September? After the way this autumn got out of the gate, with the Pac-12 stuck on the sidelines?
You’d have bitten off both arms. In a second.
The Buffs were playing with house money Saturday. Heck, they’ve been playing with it for about a month now. Do we need to run over Vegas’ preseason over-under on wins again? (Spoiler: the count was below 2.)
Like Klatt, who was originally assigned to the Ohio State-Michigan game that got called off earlier in the week, CU wasn’t even supposed to be here.
But here they are. And still on the table: A postseason contest, assuming anything more than the mega-money bowls still get played, and a winning season. Neither of those ships have landed ‘round these parts in four years.
Are there cracks in the dam? Sure. But it’s nowhere near a flood yet.
Of the Buffs’ 22 starters on offense and defense, 11 — half — were either freshmen or sophomores. Of those, eight played on the offensive side of the ball, and three along the interior of the line. Speaking of that interior, the Utes countered with two senior defensive tackles in 310-pound Hauati Pututau and 323-pound Viane Moala. No wonder the holes that we’re used to seeing Jarek Broussard (80 rushing yards, 16 receiving yards) squirt through felt few and far between.
We were reminded that being a kamikaze quarterback is not without some risk: CU signal-caller Sam Noyer has been playing dinged up for a while, Dorrell admitted after the contest, and a shot Noyer took the fourth quarter only appeared to make things worse. Backup quarterback Tyler Lytle celebrating his Saturday cameo by announcing after the game that he’s jumping into the transfer portal? Also doesn’t help. At least in the short term.
When the seas get rough, you go as your seniors go. This CU class, who would’ve been honored during a “normal” home finale, could’ve packed it in ages ago. The Michigan State Spartans on Saturday dropped to 2-5 in Midnight Mel Tucker’s first campaign after blowing a 21-10 halftime lead at Penn State.
Dorrell said that his locker room was “disappointed” after the game but refuted the idea that his young Buffs succumbed to pregame or game-week hype. Even with Gus and Joel shivering on the call.
“I don’t talk about (that),” Dorrell said. “I think you guys (in the media) do it more than we do. We had to just do the things we were capable of doing for ourselves. A lot of it was self-inflicted today.”
Again, they’re better than that. And they’ve got at least two more chances to prove it. We think. We hope.
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