What are you ready for, coach? If Karl Dorrell doesn’t play freshman Owen McCown at quarterback towards UCLA, the following Buffs coach will.
CU followers, bless them, want one thing to cling to. One thing to come back to Folsom Subject for. A purpose to not rise up and flee after Ralphie runs to glory.
The 2022 Buffs, 0-3 after a 49-7 mashing by the hands of soon-to-be-ranked Minnesota (3-0), are unwatchable. Saturday at Huntington Financial institution Stadium was a three-hour infomercial of arm tackles, missed blocks, dropped passes and safeties with cartoon tire tracks drawn throughout their respective stomach buttons.
Choice A at quarterback, switch J.T. Shrout (4-of-11 passing, 24 yards, one landing), has Drew Lock’s arm and Drew Lock’s pocket presence, with zero clue what’s happening round him or behind him.
Choice B, sophomore Brendon Lewis (2-of-6 passing, 14 yards), has no clue what’s in entrance of him.
Choice C, although, is the place issues get fascinating. Sure, McCown seems like he’s about 13. Sure, itemizing him at 175 kilos may be a tad beneficiant. However privately, scouts and coaches say he’s the future. And given what we’ve seen of Lewis and Shrout’s “battle” for the beginning job — a job neither of them appears to need — within the current, why not begin the child’s clock now?
The left-handed teen from Texas in a single sequence — a garbage-time sequence, granted, with the hosts up 42 and emptying the bench — threw for 52 yards on seven makes an attempt. Whereas Minnesota was engaged, Shrout and Lewis mixed for simply 38 yards on a 6-for-17 passing day.
After taking a sack on his first Buffs snap, McCown accomplished his subsequent three throws, together with a 15-yarder to Caleb Fauria on fourth-and-2 to the Minnesota 31. McCown fired a rope into Jaylon Jackson on fourth-and-10 for a 28-yard achieve to finish the sport for his fourth completion on seven tries.
The younger man’s a mission, no query. However in a season that already seems misplaced — the Buffs’ 30 factors after three video games is this system’s fewest since 2006, Dan Hawkins’ less-than-epic debut — earlier than it actually acquired began, it’s a mission value revisiting when the Buffs open Pac-12 play towards the Bruins subsequent weekend.
McCown apart, Saturday proved to be a waste of a sunny afternoon within the Twin Cities, one other embarrassment on nationwide tv towards a Energy-5 “peer.”
We knew this September slate — vs. TCU, at Air Pressure, at Minnesota, vs. the Bruins — wasn’t made for the timid. It clearly wasn’t made this offense, both, provided that that is the primary time a CU soccer crew has ever began a season with three consecutive defeats of 25 factors or extra.
CU athletic director Rick George defined to me not too long ago that the Buffs’ scheduling madness was by design, as a way to get this system extra appearances on broadcast channels with higher saturation. To make a stronger case for the Buffs to community execs — you realize, those who run the game — that CU brings eyeballs it doesn’t matter what league it’s enjoying in. (Additionally, as a result of roughly half of the Buffs’ video games during the last decade had been buried on the Pac-12 Community, the place no one might discover them.)
The draw back, in fact, is when these pleasant eyeballs really feel as in the event that they’re being poked with a big, pointed stick. Currently, the Buffs’ TV appearances — CU acquired down 14-0 throughout the first eight minutes, after trailing 10-0 throughout the first six minutes at Air Pressure the weekend prior — have devolved rapidly into an train in soccer masochism.
Which implies loyal Buffs followers have a selection: Both watch their crew go to the woodshed in hi-def or flip the TV off, for their very own sanity, and head outdoors to mow the garden as an alternative.
If this retains up, the Buffs are going to exchange Kansas and Rutgers as America’s Energy 5 homecoming opponent of selection. During the last two seasons, the Buffs are 0-4 in pre-conference nationwide TV showcases. They’ve been outscored 136-37.
Given the leisure worth of this offense — which is none — in the case of tossing a freshman into the fireplace at quarterback, what does CU need to lose? Apart from extra video games?
As a result of at this level, there’s solely a lot extra eye-poking a loyal fan base can take. And people lawns certain as heck gained’t mow themselves.
