Menu
What's new
By:
Filters
AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!

Overall thoughts coming out of the spring? (Both pleasant surprises and concerns)

SnowBuff said:
last year's pass defense was ranked 112 out of like 118 in the country.. With two NFL corners. Who are gone. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Click to expand...


To be fair, having two NFL corners isn't much of a help when you blitz them so you can leave Jonathan Hawkins man on man in press coverage against the other team's best receiver. I don't think the secondary will necessarily suck this year, simply because of how stupid our defensive gameplans were last year. Time and time again we had a guy not named Jimmy or Jalil in man coverage on a starting receiver. For that matter, way too many times we had a man corner in Jalil Brown who sucked at zone coverage getting torched in zone cause he'd jump the first move made by a receiver. Ron Collins: "Let's see, we have two man corners, a shaky pass rush and inexperienced safeties? Let's play the zone blitz!"

I'm not saying that I'm not worried about our secondary, but if we get a better performance up front and have half-decent schemes in back we should keep from getting completely torched like the last three years. This year I'd settle for not totally clueless.
 
BuffsRising said:
To be fair, having two NFL corners isn't much of a help when you blitz them so you can leave Jonathan Hawkins man on man in press coverage against the other team's best receiver. I don't think the secondary will necessarily suck this year, simply because of how stupid our defensive gameplans were last year. Time and time again we had a guy not named Jimmy or Jalil in man coverage on a starting receiver. For that matter, way too many times we had a man corner in Jalil Brown who sucked at zone coverage getting torched in zone cause he'd jump the first move made by a receiver. Ron Collins: "Let's see, we have two man corners, a shaky pass rush and inexperienced safeties? Let's play the zone blitz!"

I'm not saying that I'm not worried about our secondary, but if we get a better performance up front and have half-decent schemes in back we should keep from getting completely torched like the last three years. This year I'd settle for not totally clueless.
Click to expand...

Or when you make Jimmy Smith stay on one side of the field even if AJ Green lines up on the other.
 
Having not seen any practices, scrimmages or spring game, I have to go off of what I'm reading here and in article/videos. The secondary and special teams seem to be the big concern.

Offense looks to be pretty good, I think the front 7 will be too.
 
absinthe said:
Didnt west and Kasa sit out the scrimmage? if that is the case expect end play to pick up massively just by getting those 2 back.
Click to expand...

Not to bash on a kid, but how much help will Kasa be this year? Serious question, what is the extent of his injury and did it seem he was "getting it"
before his injury. For a recruit we stole from Fla it sure seems we have heard very little from him. Hoping for a breakout year, that's for sure... would do wonders for our D
 
rynobuff said:
Not to bash on a kid, but how much help will Kasa be this year? Serious question, what is the extent of his injury and did it seem he was "getting it"
before his injury. For a recruit we stole from Fla it sure seems we have heard very little from him. Hoping for a breakout year, that's for sure... would do wonders for our D
Click to expand...

Fair questions, here's what i'm hoping...

The previous regime focused on getting all the kids who tried hard in practice to get out there in the game, no matter how "talented" you may be. This rewarded practicing hard, but didn't exactly put our best team out there. We were attempting (I hope) to get our most talented players to practice harder. That didn't work. We ended up basically appealing to smaller guys who ran some killer wind sprints on Tuesday. We were focusing on the wrong group of guys, leaving the guys with NFL bodies on an island. The guys that succeeded in the previous regime were the smaller or
"slower" guys that tried hard or had something to prove (McKnight, Chapelle Brown, Speedy, Jeff Smart, CHawkins etc).

The current staff wants to get the best guys out on the field. If you don't practice hard/well, you're not going to be playing. It seems to me like they're focusing on developing the guys that have the most NFL talent, or NFL bodies (Rippy, Major, Obi, P Rich, Hopefully some of our OL, TEs, etc) by saying something to the effect of "This is how it works in the show. If you want to play big boy ball, you'd better pick it up."

This is what makes me optimistic about the future. We're looking for big fast guys that can play and want to get the NFL, not "diamonds in the rough" or "under the radar guys" that have that twinkle in their eye and a great handshake. Kasa has physical potential to play in the NFL. If he wants that dream, he'd better hit the weight room and get after it on the practice field, because we now have the proper conduit to get him there. Hopefully he'll get more opportunities to showcase his talent.
 
My biggest concern is 13 straight games without a bye this upcoming season. I would be thrilled with a bowl invite for the Buffs this year.
 
Good pass defense is usually the result of a good pass rush. A good pass rush will make an average secondary look outstanding.
 
Tractor, what you are saying is identical to what the last staff did. They had guys they had to play early on because of gaping holes. Celestine and Josh Smith were two that played because they had some speed but they never worked hard. Celestine admitted it later and Josh lived it every day.

Hawk tried to impose the "practice or don't play" schtick, after he already had let them play and guys scoffed. Hawk then played slow walkon wide receivers and sat guys like Simmons. Everyone pissed and moaned.

The problem wasn't that Hawkins had this policy, it's that he skated on the policy when he was desperate for some speed on the field and later tried to impose it. He didn't have the 'nads to enforce tough law up front.

Embree came in and cut Simmons in two weeks. Everyone cheered. The same people who bitched that he wasn't on the field.

Hawkins didn't fail because he didn't play the best players (with the exception of QB anyway). He failed when he didn't demand more from his guys and show them up front that he was serious.


Kasa was recruited to Florida as an Offensive Tackle. I've watched him play and he does not have nearly the burst to play DE in the NFL. Uzo does, Kasa does not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top