BOULDER — Air Ralphie right, Air Ralphie left. The CU Buffs aren’t poor. They’re just too darn predictable.
“He has freedom because he’s earned it,” CU football coach Deion Sanders said Tuesday of his son, Shedeur Sanders, the Buffs’ QB1 and the last word on CU’s play-calls.
“I mean, he’s a senior and he’s played a lot of football, seen a lot of football, and he has a tremendous relationship with (offensive coordinator) Pat (Shurmur). They trust one another.
“But you’ve got to understand, the mic cuts off at 15 seconds. So a lot of (defenses) they may not show their hand until that time, so you may change it. They may change the look … but he has freedom.”
He has a book on him, too. After Ralphie VI is back in her trailer, the running stops. In baseball parlance, CU’s offense is fastball after fastball after fastball. Worse yet, opponents are looking for it on the first pitch.
According to SportsSource Analytics, the Buffs have thrown it 32 times on 53 first down, or 60.3% of the time. Context: The other 15 teams in the pass-happy Big 12 have chucked it on 40.5% on first down.
Small sample size, granted. But among league schools, only Texas Tech and the Buffs are passing on first down at a rate higher than 48%. On third-and-3 or fewer, CU’s thrown it on 4 of 9 tries through two games, or 44.4% of the time. The rest of the Big 12’s ratio: 28.4%.
It ain’t rocket science. Doesn’t matter if you’re North Dakota State two weeks ago or CSU on Saturday. Pin your ears back and go.
“How many times did (Cornhuskers Dylan) Raiola get touched? How many times did Raiola get touched?” the younger Sanders said during his postgame news conference at Nebraska last weekend. “Of course, whenever you’re able to run the ball consistently … you’ve got to understand what your team’s good at.”
No. 2’s as fun and fearless as they come. But there are only two scenarios, this early in a season, where you can start sliding your offensive linemen under a bus like that. One, if you don’t care if those dudes ever put their guts on the line for you again. Or, two, if your father is the coach, and those dudes have to put up said guts in order to keep their jobs.
“Of course. I feel like we’ve got the right guys,” Coach Prime said of his offensive line, a position group he largely recruited from the transfer portal. “You may see us shake something up a little bit. Phil Loadholt is a wonderful offensive line coach. Pat does a tremendous job in calling plays, as he did the first game. So, you just can’t take a snapshot of one game and not understand the first game — we (had) over 500 yards of offense (against NDSU) …
“But game-to-game, it’s going to be something else. Like, we go out there and run for a couple hundred yards, you’re going …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Sports
