What a frustrating, hair pulling night to sit at Jones AT&T. Just some of my thoughts:
-The script from Kittley was money. Hit underneath drags and crossers, hit some RPO throws, and we were mostly cooking on the first three drives. But after Colorado adjusted, we were laughably bad most of the night on offense.
-The OL was a train wreck today. Total disaster. Couldn’t run the ball against light boxes, missed a ton of blocks, and Colorado abused us in pass pro. The worst they’ve played all year up front, and while CU certainly has the best pass rush we’ve seen all year, something was majorly off with our protections and how we were IDing, Joey said as much after the game. This is problem A1 as to why we lost.
-Behren was A2. He can’t make reads that aren’t an RPO or quick throw right now. Any true drop back passing that’s beyond what was in the script/gameplan, and he’s deer in the headlights. No feel for pressure, no internal clock for when he needs to get the ball out by. The more he has to think, the worse he plays. He also took several really bad sacks that cost us huge yardage and put us way behind the sticks. I hate to say it, but I just don’t know how you fix this with him right now.
-With the playcalling, some things frustrated me, some lack of adjustments that I’d be just be rehashing again, but tonight was more about poor execution by your bad OL and your QB.
-One thing I didn’t understand with the run game was why we didn’t try anything outside the tackles much. Had that great toss play for the TD in the third quarter but where was a change up toss play to JKoby? Where was any outside zone? Where was a speed option? Why not try any of this when we couldn’t run inside? We just kept hammering our heads into a wall running inside.
-Kittley has said that Behren operates his best when we go tempo. Kittley tried to go to some of this late and at times had success with it. Why not go to it sooner if Behren feels better when he can go fast?
-Defensively, a near flawless first half. Second half, I mostly thought the defense was put in binds by the offense. Got pretty good pressure most of the night, but Sanders is a scrambling magician. If it wasn’t him, we probably have a whole bunch of sacks and throwaways and have maybe our overall best defensive performance of the year. Other than CU’s elite skill players making a couple plays in space, we didn’t allow them to hit a big home run pass downfield the whole game. Deruyter is growing this side of the ball, which makes it even more frustrating when we see the offense continue the same song and dance.
The fake punt: I get a fake call there to get some momentum, offense had been bad. But it was more so just the execution and call itself. Pass plays from punters always scare me. Dont hate the idea of a fake, just the wrong call there, IMO.
-It wasn’t the main reason you lost, but the god awful officiating certainly helped Colorado out a lot. The rough call changed the momentum in the game. Colorado’s O-line got away with murder. There were a ton of missed facemasks. That ref crew should all get canned. Atrocious officiating.
-So where do you go from here? With a bye week, I would make a change at QB, put some of these young OL into the starting lineup, and see if I can’t spark this offense. That’s not what I think will happen, but it’s what I would do. We’re wasting a really good group of skill players this year, and it’s killing me.
