BOULDER – After an offseason full of hope, optimism, and promised change, Colorado’s season opener against TCU offered more of the same.
The Buffaloes hung around for a half against the heavily favored Horned Frogs, but got blitzed after intermission in a 38-13 loss that showed a lot of the same glaring holes that plagued the Buffs a season ago.
“I wasn’t expecting that type of game,” said head coach Karl Dorrell candidly as he opened his postgame media availability.
The first half showed promise for CU, where they controlled most of the game, dominating the time of possession battle with over 22 minutes of time on offense. They were even able to kick off the night with an explosive play as sophomore quarterback, Brendon Lewis, getting the start over JT Shrout, hit veteran receiver Daniel Arias down the right sideline for a 25 yard gain on just the third play of the game.
The big gain early provided optimism that a new offensive staff had injected a sense of aggressiveness and a sense of urgency into an offense that ranked near the bottom of college football a season ago.
Following the big play, however? A series of unsuccessful runs gave the ball back to TCU on downs. The next drive petered out in the red zone thanks to a crucial delay of game penalty, resulting in a Cole Becker field goal to get CU on the board first.
To kick off the second quarter, TCU senior all purpose weapon Derius Davis fielded a short punt, split two Buffaloes, and outran the rest to the house to give the Horned Frogs a lead.
Despite the special teams blunder, the Buffs finished the half with another field goal, Shrout put together a solid series off the bench, and CU had every reason to feel optimistic heading into halftime.
The script certainly flipped after intermission. TCU took the ball after half and never looked back, opening with a 43 yard touchdown run by Emari Demercado. By the time Shrout got another chance behind center, the game was out of reach.
The Horned Frogs continued the onslaught throughout the second half, scoring on all five of their drives (excluding the kneel downs to end the game) and racking up 31 points. They did their work primarily on the ground, accumulating 261 rushing yards in the final two frames. Six different Horned Frogs posted a 20+ yard carry in that stretch.
The defense held TCU to just 67 yards of offense in the first two quarters, and just 14 on the ground, while the offense had shown a balanced attack and was able to move the ball up and down the field between the twenties.
“We were really optimistic at halftime,” said Colorado senior tight end Brady Russell postgame. “Just because of the way the defense was playing, the way we were playing, the way we might be able to make adjustments in order to attack them even better.”
“I think it’s something that we were not doing, and something that they were doing that we didn’t have the right adjustment to,” Dorrell said of TCU’s second half ground attack. “We didn’t have the answers. They had better adjustments in the second half. We felt like we made adjustments but apparently they were not as good as they should’ve been.”
The Buffs have a lot to clean up if they want to right the ship, and it starts at quarterback. Lewis got the start and most of the reps, but continued to show the same conservative tendencies that limited the Buffs offense last season. Shrout showed more willingness to push the ball downfield and stress the defense vertically, but put the ball in harm’s way multiple times.
“I’m confident that we can get it fixed,” Dorrell said postgame. “Because I know we’re a better team than what we played like today. We’re better than that. But I have to stop talking about it and we just gotta go prove it. We gotta get better.”
The Buffs’ next chance to prove this comes in Colorado Springs on Sept. 10 against Air Force.
