Mile High Sports

What you need to watch for at the Colorado Buffaloes’ spring game

Zach Segars
Colorado Buffaloes mascot Ralphie the Buffalo before the game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Folsom Field.

Colorado Buffaloes mascot Ralphie the Buffalo before the game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Folsom Field. Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

On Saturday, fans of the Colorado Buffaloes will be treated to the most eagerly awaited Black and Gold game in the history of the program.

Coach Prime arrived on campus just a few short months ago, and his impact on the program, the university, and even the city have been dramatic, and yet, we’ve never got to see his football program suit up for a single game.

That all changes on Saturday.

What shoulds Buffs Nation be on the lookout for come kickoff? Here’s your guide.

Is Coach Prime’s culture overhaul playing out on the field for the Colorado Buffaloes?

From his very first introduction to the team, Coach Prime made it clear that he would be overhauling the culture of the Colorado Buffaloes football program.

He repeatedly stated that the current state of the team was falling well short of his standard, and that would change in a hurry.

So far, we’ve seen that change go into full effect. Boulder has been engulfed by a palpable college football buzz, the likes of which haven’t been seen by the Flatirons in multiple decades, if ever. During practice, it’s also been constant, as he continues to emphasize down-to-down effort and motor over everything else. Forcing the players to earn their numbers was just one symptom that resulted from this mindset.

On Saturday, all of that talking and posturing will be put to the side, and we’ll get to see for ourselves if that culture overhaul has truly started to take hold.

What is the intensity level like for the spring game? Do we see players sprinting down-to-down and giving a much higher effort level than what we’re used to seeing? These would be on-the-field signs that the overhaul has been effective.

Off the field, you would have to be blind to miss the trappings of the Coach Prime Effect on Saturday. ESPN’s top broadcast team will be in attendance, the stadium will have a sell-out crowd for the exhibition, the city will be steeped in a tailgate-fueled haze, and the sideline will be peppered with some of the cooler A-list celebrities around.

The iconic sideline images of Snoop Dogg at USC games or Matthew McConaughey at Texas games will soon be joined by images of Rick Ross and several other stars dotting the Folsom Field sidelines.

How do the Jackson State stars look against Power-5 talent?

When Coach Prime labeled his own son the team’s starting quarterback during his introductory press conference, it ruffled some feathers and raised concerns from some fans about nepotism.

Now, those concerns were always ridiculous. Shedeur Sanders could start for the overwhelming majority of FBS programs, and will likely be discussed as an NFL Draft quarterback 12 months from now, so he was deserving of the job no matter the head coach.

However, we still haven’t seen what he looks like in action against Power-5 competition.

The same can also be said for Travis Hunter, who has been heralded as the best cornerback prospect to ever enter the college game. Yet, we’ve never seen Hunter try and cover a Power-5 wide receiver, or run a route against a Power-5 corner. On Saturday, we’ll finally catch a glimpse of that.

Plus, how these Jackson State players translate to the Division-I level is a question with grander implications than just Hunter and Sanders. The Colorado Buffaloes have six other former Jackson State stars currently competing for starting jobs.

Whether or not they’re up to the task of playing in the Power-5 will be revealed, to some degree, on Saturday, and the answer to that mystery has wide-ranging implications for the impending season.

How does the Colorado Buffaloes’ insanely high-paced offense impact the game?

All spring long we’ve heard from both the offense and defense about the absolutely astronomic pace of play that the offense has been operating at.

Under Sean Lewis, the offense is prioritizing speed over all else, as they quickly scramble up to the line after every play, in an effort to keep the defense on their heels. During the last practice media was allowed to view, the Colorado Buffaloes ran 4 plays in just 90 seconds of real-time — a blistering speed, especially when you remember that almost no one on the offensive roster has prior experience in this system.

On Saturday, we’re going to see that offense in action, and we’ll learn a good deal simply from the pace they play at.

For starters, have both sides of the ball adapted to this pace yet? Do we see the offense penalized frequently for jumping on the wrong count, aligning wrong, or creating a mistake after the snap as the result of confusion? Do we see the defense scrambling to get properly aligned and regularly blowing coverage assignments? Do we see both sides of the ball keeling over in exhaustion?

Or, do we see a cohesive offense operating as one, a defense that can keep it’s composure despite the flurry of haymakers the offense attempts to deliver, and a well-conditioned team unphased by the taxing system? Time will tell.

Are they successfully building from the outside in, and has that created problems?

Coach Prime recently expressed that his vision of team-building is that you build from the outside inward. That’s not too surprising, given the fact that Prime played cornerback and wide receiver during his time in the NFL — two perimeter positions — and although the talent he’s been able to recruit on the boundaries.

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see just how elite the Colorado Buffaloes look at both cornerback and at wide receiver.

Those two position groups should be the strengths of the roster by a considerable margin, and on Saturday, we better see those stars shine.

One potential hiccup that could prevent that display is the fact that the Buffs still have a lot of questions to answer up front, both on offense and defense.

Last year, one could have made a compelling argument that Colorado was the very worst team in the trenches in all of Division-I football, between their struggles on the offensive line, and their abhorrent defensive line play.

Coach Prime has brought in a bevy of transfers for both lines to try to remedy the problem, but it’s still clear that the lion’s share of CU’s talent exists on the boundary. The questions for Saturday will be, how wide is that talent gap, and is it too wide?

Have any Colorado Buffaloes failed to earn their number?

In this Instagram story from ESPN commentator Chris Fowler, we learned several more jersey numbers belonging to different members of the Colorado Buffaloes ahead of this week’s spring game.

If you look closely though, you’ll notice that it appears some players are still waiting to be assigned a jersey.

Some of these players, like Allan Baugh, have already entered the transfer portal, and so the fact they haven’t received a number yet isn’t overly surprising. However, seeing someone like Savion Washington — who is projected to be one of the team’s starting tackles — as one of the few without a number feels concerning.

So why don’t these players have a number yet? We’ll find out pretty soon on Saturday.

If we see players on the field without jersey numbers assigned, it tells us that those players’ roster spots, at least as far as the depth chart is concerned, are in jeopardy. It would also tell us that the dozens of players who received a jersey number this week, just before the spring game, legitimately earned their number, as opposed to receiving a last-minute temporary digit to appease the ESPN broadcast.

Also, we’ll learn who the biggest standouts from spring camp have been, based on who we see donning the single-digit numbers.

It seems silly, but the jersey numbers will tell us a lot under Coach Prime.

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