BOULDER — When they told us Julian Lewis was going to hit the ground running, they left out the part about it being for his life.
“I guess there’s a little anxiety going out there, just (with) this crowd and stuff like that, a bigger stadium than I’ve ever been in,” the CU Buffs’ true freshman quarterback said after his Folsom Field debut at Saturday’s spring game. “So, I guess (there was) a little bit (of nervousness). But, I mean, this is what I signed up for. I knew what I was getting into. So, there’s no complaints. It’s just a lot to grow from.”
He’ll get better. He’ll look better, too, in part because Lewis probably couldn’t have scripted his start much worse.
Lewis completed his first throw, a dump-off to running back Dallan Hayden for a 1-yard gain. On his second drop-back, he got chased to the right and sacked by Arden Walker. On his third, he tripped and sacked himself.
On his fourth, he fired up the left boundary for wideout Kam Mikell and missed him by about seven or eight feet.
His second series began with another roll to the right, and with the ball being batted back into his face by safety Tawfiq Byard, who nearly picked the carom off. JuJu’s second throw landed at Hayden’s feet.
He looked his age, basically. The 17-year-old — he’ll turn 18 in late September — connected on two of his first five attempts, unofficially, while working with CU’s first-team offense.
“You’ve got to understand, he’s still a young man. We don’t care about the age of the stage, though,” third-year Buffs football coach Deion Sanders said of Lewis. “He’s been held accountable. If you’re a starter, we’re going to expect you to perform as a starter right now. When you’re with the ‘1’s, you’ve got to be a ‘1.’ We’ve got time to say, ‘You’re coming and you’re growing.’ We’ve got time.”
They do. He does. If Saturday was any indication, the best thing Sanders could do for Lewis in the long term is to pump the brakes. To give a talented teenager a year in the weight room, a year with the playbook, a year with his new teammates and a year to figure all this new stuff out before being thrown to the wolves.
A redshirt isn’t an insult. It isn’t a slap in the face, nor some scarlet letter that says Lewis couldn’t cut it.
The kid we saw Saturday has all kinds of upside. But that kid also probably needs to sit. He needs to watch. He needs to get bigger and stronger so that some 23-year-old linebacker doesn’t break him in half.
If Lewis is 6-foot-1, I’m a lean, mean 185 and change. There’s no sin in being a 6-foot-ish college quarterback, especially one who can work hashmark to hashmark. But JuJu can’t beat anybody if he’s too busy lying on his back.
Like the whole Shedeur Sanders retirement kerfuffle, the prudent call with Lewis would be to not rush anything. But the young man came here for the express lane, not the local. Lewis didn’t bail on USC to watch from the bench. And he sure as heck didn’t enroll early and join the Alamo Bowl prep to take 2025 off.
Coach Prime even laughed off a suggestion late last week that he would consider redshirting his freshman signal-caller.
“Nobody said that, man. Nobody said that,” Sanders said. “That’s not our plan. That’s not his plan, but if it happens, it happens. If he sustains an injury, that puts him in that situation, but you never know. I mean, the guy could be a ‘2’ or he could be a ‘1.’ I don’t think we’re going to put him in a box like that. We’re not doing that.”
Based on the spring game, the closest thing Coach Prime has to a ‘1’ on-hand is senior transfer Kaidon Salter, who didn’t exactly light what’s left of the grass at Folsom on fire, either. In fact, the best throw of the day by any QB probably came from Ryan Staub during 7-on-7s. The most effective throw the CU offense had going was to loft 50-50 balls up into the air and try and bait the other team into a pass-interference call.
“I see JuJu growing a lot every day,” noted left tackle Jordan Seaton, who, as a sophomore leader, has grown up a lot himself over the last 14 months. “(He and Salter) both complement each other. The QB battle is going to be really good this year, so we’re still trying to figure that out. But those two quarterbacks, they’re both competing right now.”
They couldn’t have asked for a better backdrop. Saturday offered up the first sunny spring game of the Prime Era, buffeted by a crisp, dry breeze under an egg-blue sky. It was also the least well-attended — 20,430, officially.
“It was beautiful,” Sanders said. “I just wish we had a little more support, fanwise.”
Was it the sunshine? A holiday weekend? The ticket price? Crowd size matters to Sanders, and after seeing this many empty seats, especially in the student section, you’d be shocked if the wheels aren’t already turning for an inter-squad scrimmage with another team at this time next year. Coach Prime doesn’t like to leave a planted seed without water and tending, after all.
“It was my first college scrimmage, (at least) with people around it, so it’s definitely a big, big milestone for me (Saturday),” said Lewis, who wore a giant Darth Vader necklace into the postgame news conference. “But, yeah … seeing the turnout and just (as players), we’ve got a lot of stuff to grow on.”
The Force will be with him. In due time. But if the end game is to retire JuJu’s jersey, they’d be wise to redshirt it first.