RalphieMalph
Well-Known Member
I don't need to remind anyone who's been a recent fan of this program of how a loss like this can affect a team long term. I read some people mentioning that blown lead against Kansas from way back, but this felt a lot more like Oregon State in 2018 to me. Following blowing that 31-3 lead, the at one time 5-0 Buffs proceeded to lose out in thoroughly lackluster fashion for the rest of the year and end up 5-7, costing coach McIntyre his job.
There's some real collective shock/trauma that can infect a program when they have a loss like this, and the next win (whenever that happens) is going to come way harder having lost this game than it would have if they'd managed to sneak out with a win in OT. There was no shortage of things to be frustrated about in the game, but the thing that worried me the most wasn't the coaching or Hunter looking uncharacteristically human, it was how you could see the team pointing fingers at each other as their lead came collapsing down. Even after we scored in the first OT, Sheduer looked angry on the sideline (as he'd looked for the entire 4th quarter) and wasn't talking with the teammates who were trying to talk to him. Shilo went out of his way to yell at covering DBs after completions on multiple occasions. Some of that kind of talk can be leadership, but this all looked a lot more like tearing people down than it did trying to elevate a teammate to do better the next time around. Prime's going to have a tough job ahead of him in rebuilding the comradery that the team had prior to the 2nd half kickoff this week.
It's going to be very interesting to see where things go from here, but I still think this team goes bowling at the end of the year. This could be a real bad time for the team to have 2 full weeks to do nothing but brood on this and play against each other (CP said about as much in his postgame comments), but making matters worse is the fact that they'll be coming back playing against a UCLA team that IMO by the time we're kicking off will be ranked in the top 10. That defense is for real, and I think coach Kelly is going to have a literal field day finding innovative and totally generic ways to shred our defense. Not looking forward to that one. Arizona is a tough team too, to be playing right after potentially getting drubbed in a near-Oregon kind of way.
But I do think that we either beat Arizona, or we beat Oregon State the week after, and then show up big time for the rivalry game to close out the season and beat Utah for the first time since what feels like about 1905. I'm calling the Arizona game as a close loss, with Oregon State being the week where they get back over the hump and get things rolling again. My prediction:
UCLA: Loss
Arizona: Loss
Oregon State: Win
Washington State: Loss
Utah: Win. In OT. And they stop being assholes about it and go on defense first after winning the coin toss.
But man I was as certain as could be that CU was going to run away with this Stanford game (was feeling like Nostradamus in the first half) so there's a very good possibility I'm completely out of line on all this. We'll see though... go buffs.
There's some real collective shock/trauma that can infect a program when they have a loss like this, and the next win (whenever that happens) is going to come way harder having lost this game than it would have if they'd managed to sneak out with a win in OT. There was no shortage of things to be frustrated about in the game, but the thing that worried me the most wasn't the coaching or Hunter looking uncharacteristically human, it was how you could see the team pointing fingers at each other as their lead came collapsing down. Even after we scored in the first OT, Sheduer looked angry on the sideline (as he'd looked for the entire 4th quarter) and wasn't talking with the teammates who were trying to talk to him. Shilo went out of his way to yell at covering DBs after completions on multiple occasions. Some of that kind of talk can be leadership, but this all looked a lot more like tearing people down than it did trying to elevate a teammate to do better the next time around. Prime's going to have a tough job ahead of him in rebuilding the comradery that the team had prior to the 2nd half kickoff this week.
It's going to be very interesting to see where things go from here, but I still think this team goes bowling at the end of the year. This could be a real bad time for the team to have 2 full weeks to do nothing but brood on this and play against each other (CP said about as much in his postgame comments), but making matters worse is the fact that they'll be coming back playing against a UCLA team that IMO by the time we're kicking off will be ranked in the top 10. That defense is for real, and I think coach Kelly is going to have a literal field day finding innovative and totally generic ways to shred our defense. Not looking forward to that one. Arizona is a tough team too, to be playing right after potentially getting drubbed in a near-Oregon kind of way.
But I do think that we either beat Arizona, or we beat Oregon State the week after, and then show up big time for the rivalry game to close out the season and beat Utah for the first time since what feels like about 1905. I'm calling the Arizona game as a close loss, with Oregon State being the week where they get back over the hump and get things rolling again. My prediction:
UCLA: Loss
Arizona: Loss
Oregon State: Win
Washington State: Loss
Utah: Win. In OT. And they stop being assholes about it and go on defense first after winning the coin toss.
But man I was as certain as could be that CU was going to run away with this Stanford game (was feeling like Nostradamus in the first half) so there's a very good possibility I'm completely out of line on all this. We'll see though... go buffs.
