BOULDER — When Colorado’s Pat Shurmur was named the Buffaloes’ full-time offensive coordinator in the offseason, he didn’t promise any secret sauce.

Shurmur has been around football long enough to know what is necessary to produce winning football. There’s no magic bullet, no formula unknown to everyone else.

“Common-sense football,” Shurmur told the media after Friday’s practice. “We need to be able to run the ball when teams are thinking that we are going to run the ball. We need to protect the passer better … And when you’re throwing and catching you want to do it at a high clip and complete passes. Those are the important things. And then when you get into the red area, you want to score touchdowns.”

Of course, the Buffs weren’t exactly successful in many of those categories last fall. CU gave up 56 sacks — most of any Power 5 team — and finished last in the nation in rushing yards per game. Colorado did finish in the top 10 in the nation in completion percentage (Shedeur Sanders completed 69 percent of his passes) but CU also finished in the bottom half of the nation in red zone scores because … well, because the Buffs didn’t get there nearly as often as other teams.

Now it’s Shurmur’s job to fix those issues.

He certainly has the credentials. After more than two decades in the NFL — including two stints as a head coach — he returned to the college game last year, first serving as an analyst under Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders, then taking over as co-offensive coordinator and play caller for the final four games of the 2023 season.

Shurmur isn’t taking much from last year’s four-game stint to finish the season. “It’s hard to cook in somebody else’s kitchen because you can’t really change anything at that point,” he said.

 But now, Shurmur is the head chef in his own kitchen — and he has plenty of new cooks available to put together an entirely new menu.

After one week of fall camp, so far so good.

“I really feel like we’re coming together as a team,” Shurmur said. “It’s a credit to the new players we brought in and the old players that were here and their mindset going into this. It’s been fun. And if you sense my excitement, this has been fun for me. Working with these young players, I got a new, fresh perspective. It’s a more wide-open style of ball, which is not as much as what I was used to at the pro level. And we got a lot of really fine players and it’s fun to get them ready to go. So that’s where I’m at.”

Shurmur definitely received some new ingredients for his kitchen. The running backs room has just one holdover from last year who had even one carry for the Buffaloes and the offensive line will feature five new starters.

“What I do know is we were able to kind of reset it the way we wanted to,” Shurmur said. “The guys went out and got us some new players. We felt like we needed to go get more quality big men and then install an offense that works for us. And so I feel like it’s a new start moving forward.”

But along with a host of new faces, Shurmur also inherited Sanders as the returning quarterback — quite possibly the most-important and most valuable player on the team. Also returning are several key receivers, along with some new faces on the outside,

 It will be up to Shurmur to make sure Sanders has every chance to utilize his tremendous skill set as much as possible while also remaining upright.

“Every day we have a kind of a checklist of things that we’re working on,” Shurmur said. “Today we did a little moving the ball in the red zone, which was good. By the end of it, I think we want to make sure that they’re learning the tactics. But ultimately, they want to just keep honing their skills and keep coming together as a team. So everything we do is really focused on that.”

So far, CU’s rebuilt offensive line has been drawing good reviews from players and coaches.

“It’s amazing, night and day,” running back Charlie Offerdahl said of the difference between this year and last. “Guys, we had in the spring, you can see it there on the guys … They’re big, they’re fast, they can move their feet well, they’re getting on blocks, and they’re creating those holes for us. So it’s amazing.”

One lineman who continues to be mentioned by players is transfer right tackle Kahlil Benson, who started all 12 games last year at Indiana.

I love Kahlil,” Offerdahl said. “Kahlil’s my brother. But he’s nasty. He’ll get after it now. And he’ll put people in the dirt.”

That “nastiness,” Offerdahl said, is something that was missing a year ago.

“We need some of that nastiness on the line, and we definitely got it now,” he said.

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Story by Neill Woelk, Contributing Editor for CUBuffs.com. Content courtesy of the University of Colorado at Boulder.