Heading into last Saturday's matchup against then-No. 7 Oregon in Eugene, Colorado had come off a downright woeful offensive performance the week prior at Cal Berkeley.
The Buffaloes mustered a measly 103 yards of total offense in the 26-3 loss to the Bears, who entered the game at 1-5 (0-4 Pac-12) on the year, good for dead last place in the Pac-12 North Division.
The game marked a new low seen by Colorado's offensive line, which allowed a season-high six sacks of freshman quarterback Brendon Lewis, while, looking at the run game, Jarek Broussard, Alex Fontenot and Co. averaged just 1.3 yards per carry.
The play of the offensive line was bad enough to warrant Karl Dorrell relieving position coach Mitch Rodrigue of his duties, news of which was announced by CU officially on Monday of last week.
Taking over for Rodrigue in an interim capacity has been William Vlachos, who joined Colorado's staff originally in 2019.
Right off the bat, Vlachos has been enjoying the opportunity given to him by Dorrell.
“It’s been fun, having to kind of adjust on the fly," he said. "It’s been great — gotta keep getting them better, get some wins here and close this thing out.”
Vlachos, 33, a former first-team All-SEC center at Alabama who got his coaching start with the Crimson Tide before joining the Buffalo Bills, was serving as a quality control coach for the Buffaloes when Dorrell tapped him to oversee the o-line in Rodrigue's place.
Given the performance up front against the less-than-elite Cal Bears, naturally, fans seemed to expect little from the Vlachos-led offensive line going on the road to play the No. 7 Oregon Ducks.
Adding to that doubt was the fact that the Ducks were coming off a win over UCLA in which they racked up 11 tackles for loss and four sacks against the Bruins.
However, while Colorado fell to the Ducks, 52-29, the offense turned in arguably its best performance of the season against an FBS foe.
Lewis was well-protected, being sacked just one time on the day, and the support from his offensive linemen allowed him to go 25-of-33 with 224 yards and three touchdown passes.
On the ground, Colorado performed noticeably better, as well, rushing for 117 yards in total, compared to the 35 yards gained against California.
The Buffs averaged 3.9 yards per carry against the Ducks — far from praiseworthy, yet considerably better than figures seen earlier this year, such as the 2.1 and -0.9 yards per rush CU posted against USC and Minnesota.
Befuddling for Dorrell and Colorado fans was witnessing the regression of CU's o-line this season — culminating with its performance at Cal — given that the position group isn't exactly young.
Redshirt freshman Jake Wiley is the only player who lacked starting experience leading into this year, while junior center Colby Pursell, senior left guard Kary Kutsch plus redshirt sophomore tackles Casey Roddick and Frank Fillip all had started multiple games (for Kutsch and Pursell, multiple seasons) for CU in years prior.
Noting that, Vlachos sought to bolster his players' trust in their own capabilities.
“There’s some guys in there that have played a lot of football," Vlachos said. "I’m not going to sit here and say they played terrible football this year — they didn’t. There’s been some tough games, tough opponents, tough looks and all that."
"Half of blocking people is believing you can block the guy across from you and wanting to block the guy. I’m just trying to instill that and get them to play with confidence and play fast.”
Fillip indicated that Vlachos' presence has initiated a change.
“(There's) definitely more energy in the room — a lot more juice, as we like to call it," offensive tackle Fillip said of Vlachos' leadership. "It helps you clean up some details that were lacking, both in technique and kind of cleaning some things up. It showed and paid off against Oregon.”
Colorado's offensive line will get its next shot to continue to improve this Saturday evening against the visiting Oregon State Beavers, a team with 13 sacks on the year through eight games.
With an impressive performance against the Ducks and a solid week of practice leading into this Saturday, Vlachos and his offensive linemen will look to keep things rolling at 5 p.m. (MST) vs. the Beavs.
“We had a very productive week," Fillip said. "We’re feeling good about how the unit practiced as a whole and I’m excited to see how we do on Saturday.”
