BOULDER — You want to know why the Buffs would run through Hades in a gasoline suit, to paraphrase the late Pete Rose, for Robert Livingston? Because he’ll do the same for them. No matter how badly his lungs burn.
“I always thought he was a very confident young man. Whenever something would go wrong, a mistake, he wouldn’t let it bother him,” Jimmye Laycock, who coached CU’s wunderkind defensive coordinator at William & Mary, told me recently by phone. “He wasn’t cocky about it. He was very confident about it. (He’d say), ‘We’ll get it next time.’ ”
True story: As punishment for the penalty incurred while celebrating a Travis Hunter interception at CSU last month, CU defenders were required the next week to run five gassers for every flag tossed at the victorious Buffs. Rather than pile on, rather than play the bad cop, Livingston ran those gassers right alongside his guys.
“CU got somebody who brought solid stability to that defense,” Laycock said. “He’s not going to be a fly-by-night, knee-jerk-reaction type of guy, and try to change things overnight. He’ll build it the right way.”
He’s built a beast. The Buffs went rolling into a massive home showdown with Cincinnati late Saturday night giving up 21.9 points per game, a stat that might not blow your mind at first glance. But it should when you frame it within the knowledge that a) CU’s posted that number while taking on the pass-happy, spread offenses in the Big 12; b) the Buffs gave up 34.8 points per game a year ago; and c) CU’s defenses, relatively speaking, have largely stunk over the last decade.
Stat to clip and save: The Buffs since 2014 have finished a season giving up less than 22 points a game just once — in 2016 when CU went 10-2 and shocked the experts by winning the Pac-12 South. Defense wins you-know-whats.
In his first season as a play-caller anywhere, at any level, Livingston has the Buffs putting up Jim Leavitt numbers. Which means Deion Sanders’ secret weapon is becoming less of a secret each week.
CU’s giving up 12.3 points per game on the road over their last three trips away from BoCo. In four road tilts on the season, they’ve surrendered just 3.3 points per game after halftime. Nebraska, CSU, UCF and Arizona all followed the same script — if you don’t get the Buffs early, you’re not getting ’em at all. Period.
“Just being around him, he brings excitement, he brings joy,” CU defensive ends coach Vincent Dancy said of Livingston recently. “You can see the smile because that’s what he makes you do — even though it’s a bad play, he’s still smiling. He’s still upbeat. He’s still running around. He still has a lot of joy on the sideline, man. The way these guys play, they play off him. As you can see.”
It’s not just the coaches. Or the players. It’s the optics. One of the prevailing images of last fall at …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Sports
