Colorado football improved to 2-0 on the season with a huge 35-32 road win against the Stanford Cardinal. It is the Buffs’ third straight victory over Stanford. Colorado is sending a clear message to the rest of the conference it is contenders in the Pac-12 South. It is the fifth straight 2-0 start for Colorado football, and it remains tied with USC for the division lead.
Sam Noyer continues to impress
Head coach Karl Dorrell‘s decision to start Noyer at quarterback is being proven right more and more with every week.
Noyer has continued to impress as a passer, throwing for 15 completions, 255 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. The Colorado receivers burned the Stanford defensive backs the entire game, allowing Noyer to throw for an average of 17 yards per completion.
Noyer’s athletic ability was also on full display, rushing the ball eight times for 36 yards and two touchdowns. Noyer may want to practice sliding as he put his body on the line for quite a few big hits.
Dimitri Stanley emerging as top WR option
With the departure of current Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Laviska Shenault Jr., the Buffs didn’t have to search long for their next top wideout.
Sophomore Dimitri Stanley is quickly emerging as Noyer’s go-to wide receiver option. Stanley had an impressive six catch, 126 yards and one touchdown performance against the Cardinal. The most impressive play of the game came when Stanley took a short dump off 55 yards to the house in the first quarter.
“Dimitri will make plays. Whether it is a five-yard dump-off taking it to the house as you saw today or its a long ball across the middle,” Noyer said of Stanley postgame. “Dimitri is fearless. He plays hard every single game.”
Jarek Broussard stampede continues
The Colorado rushing game has been nothing short of incredible to start the season.
First-year starter Jarek Broussard rushed for over 100 yards for the second straight game, going for 121 yards on 27 carries. Even with his little stature, standing at 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds, Broussard runs with remarkable toughness. He has more than proven himself to be the Buffs every-down back with 308 yards and three touchdowns through two games.
The Buffs offensive line has been a large part of the rushing game’s success. Even without starting center Colby Pursell, the offensive line created hole after hole for the running backs to run through and never gave up a sack the entire game. Starting left guard Kary Kutsch moved over to center, and junior Chance Lytle stepped in at left guard to make his first career start.
Buffs need to be better in the fourth quarter
After allowing UCLA to come back and make what seemed to be a blowout into a close game, Colorado allowed Stanford to do the same exact thing. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Buffs led Stanford 35-16.
For the rest of the quarter, fans watched as the stifling Colorado defense turned into a subway turnstile as Stanford climbed all the way back to within three points with just over two minutes remaining. Then with a chance to put the game away, the offense went three and out and punted the ball back with only 10 seconds left.
Stanford outgained Colorado 173-29 total yards in the fourth quarter. Dorrell spoke on his team’s second-half performance after the game.
“It was a great win for our team,” Dorrell said. “If I had the choice, I would have orchestrated it a little bit better in the second half … We felt we built a pretty comfortable lead — and that’s the point of the matter, it wasn’t too comfortable, because they came back. But our players hung in there. That’s a good team that we played. I would have liked to have finished that game on our terms, but it’s a great win. We’re still learning as a team. I felt we played as well as we needed to to finish the game.”
What’s next?
Unfortunately for Colorado football, the Pac-12 announced next week’s game against the Arizona State Sun Devils on Nov. 21 is being been canceled due to a number of positive football student-athlete COVID-19 cases and resulting contact tracing. Among the positive cases at ASU is head coach Herm Edwards.
“We’ve been real fortunate about keeping our players healthy through camp and so far during the first couple of weeks,” Dorrell said. “We have known all along that this has been a real possibility and it’s something that is out of our control. It’s literally a week-by-week deal and we’ll continue to move forward.”
CU athletic director Rick George said that he will work with the conference to attempt to reschedule a football game for Colorado this weekend.
“We will look at any and all options about us being able to play this weekend,” George said. “It’s too early right now to gauge everything, the conference did pair UCLA and Cal today on very short notice, so we’ll have to see what transpires day-to-day around the league.”
The next scheduled game for Colorado football is at No. 20 USC on Nov. 28.
Photo courtesy of CUBuffs.com
