After losing to Arizona State 48-23 last Saturday night, the Colorado Buffaloes seem to be on the precipice of collapse. No matter what the Buffs do, it always seems as if the depths of the Pac-12 loom like a black hole, sucking CU down further and further with each conference game.
Something — someone — needs to break that gravitational pull, the mindset that failure is inevitable, and right the Buffs once again. That someone appears to be Phillip Lindsay, the diminutive sophomore running back out of Aurora, Colorado.
As reported by John Meyer of the Denver Post on Tuesday, Lindsay stepped into the locker room following the Buffs’ third loss of the season and ordered the team to meet for a players’ only meeting the next day.
“After the game, everyone was pretty upset,” defensive end Derek McCartney said. “Phillip Lindsay came in, he was fired up, and he said, ‘Everyone come in, we’re having a meeting tomorrow.’ Everyone had to be there.”
And from Lindsay, I would expect nothing less.
Week to week, there is nobody on the Buffaloes roster that plays harder and with more passion than Lindsay. When CU needs a play, it always seems to be little No. 23 spinning through the defense towards a first down.
Right now, CU needs someone to stand up and push this team towards victory, and there’s no one more capable than Lindsay.
“He’s an excellent leader, he gives everything he has, he has great heart,” head coach Mike MacIntyre said of Lindsay. “They were excited about what happened in the meeting.”
MacIntyre continued: “They were more focused, there was more guys getting on each other, more initiative. We didn’t have to tell somebody to pay attention, the other players did. That was a real positive.”
As we’ve seen over the last two seasons, the Buffs have the ability to compete in nearly every game they play in; the wins, though, have remained elusive.
It’s on the players now to change the course of their season, and it sounds as if they’re on the right track.
“A lot of good things were said,” quarterback Sefo Liufau said. “The coaches can only do so much for us. They can give us all the right techniques, all the right plays, but it’s up to us to go out there and execute. Ultimately we came out with a better feeling and a better understanding of what needs to be done.”
McCartney added: “It wasn’t to scare people, like, ‘We have to do this or we’re never going to be any good.’ It’s more like, ‘You just believe in yourself,’ like, ‘We can do this.’ It was more of a positive-type deal.”
Players’ meeting or not, CU isn’t going to suddenly find themselves competing for the Pac-12 Championship, but if they can begin to make marginal improvements each week, then this season will have been a success.