While Colorado sat idle during its bye week, the other four interim head coaches in college football went 4-0 over the weekend, and now it's interim head coach Mike Sanford's turn to see if he can extend that streak -- while ending another for the Buffs -- against Cal on Saturday at Folsom Field.
During the open week, some players traveled around the country to spend time with family and everyone took a reflective, necessary break from this so far tumultuous season. Sanford and the coaches also hit the road to recruit. Now, every Buff is back in Boulder preparing for Saturday eager for a fresh start.
“There is an emotional toll on student-athletes with regards to change and that's never gonna change,” Sanford said. “Us having a bye week allowed us to get some of our practices and our process in place and I really do believe these players have bought into that process. We're not going to really talk about going into this game that this is ‘an interim head coach advantage game,’ because this thing is about the players. It's not about me, and it's not about our staff, it's about our players, in restoring their confidence, their belief, and their trust in one another and their trust in us.”
Colorado (0-5, 0-2 Pac-12) is the only winless team in college football. And the Buffs aren't just winless, they've had to process the aggregate toll of five consecutive losses all by 23 or more points.
Slowly the offense began showing some positive gains with the introduction of freshman quarterback Owen McCown, as the last game against Arizona saw Colorado's best offensive performance with three touchdowns. McCown had some positive moments in the pass game, but the running backs sparked further hope in the offense’s potential to move forward, as Anthony Hankerson seized his opportunity with 68 rushing yards and a TD on 5.7 yards per carry while Deion Smith averaged 5 yards on his 4 attempts.
“Schematically, we're doing pretty much everything the same,” Smith said. “We've been emphasizing trying to find a rhythm. The thing that gets us week to week is that we'll have our game plan, and then we'll get out there and a series of events will happen, we'll get behind … and now instead of us playing loose, we're a little bit more conservative just because we feel the urgency of, ‘OK, we're behind, we got to get points up now. We got to get these big chunks.’ So the biggest thing for us is just focusing on what we do best.”
As seen in that game two Saturdays ago, the problems still persist within Colorado’s defense, which allowed 673 yards – the most all season.
Cal’s starting QB Jack Plummer is expected to start this Saturday after enduring a leg injury against Washington State on Oct. 1.
Sanford experienced Plummer’s capabilities when the QB was at Purdue and passed for 367 yards and 3 TDs in a 34-31 loss to Minnesota -- where Sanford was the offensive coordinator -- in 2020.
Along with running into Plummer again, Sanford will say hello to some familiar faces on the coaching staff.
“There are six coaches, including the head football coach, at Cal that I either played with, either coached at Stanford or my dad coached with,” he said.
Cal possesses a variety of offensive weapons that could once again expose CU’s weaknesses.
The star for the Golden Bears is true freshman running back Jaydn Ott, who has 532 rushing yards on 7.4 yards per carry, 104 receiving yards and 7 total touchdowns. He rushed for 274 yards and 3 touchdowns against Arizona.
This week, interim defensive coordinator Gerald Chatman and the rest of the defensive staff are vetting every new defensive approach, according to Sanford.
“They're vetting everything that they're doing,” he said. “We put in a new call, or we put in a new front structure, or we put in a new pressure, we're gonna vet every single thing about it. I love the work that they're putting in together. And you can't forget, this is gonna be Gerald Chatman's first game calling it, but everything that I've seen is that he has embraced the role.”
Every member in Colorado's program is focusing on their processes this week in the hopes to come out with a win against Cal. There’s film to review, but other than that, the Buffs prefer not to dwell on the past but turn the page toward the future.
Playing complementary football is CU’s top priority this week. Colorado’s defense must pull its weight if anything is going to truly change the rest of the way.
“It's shared ownership, instead of it's kind of, offense is this, defense is this, special teams is this,” Sanford said. “We're gonna play together as one Buff family and that's what I'm starting to see in practice.
