By the time Colorado's defense had settled down and largely done much of the heavy lifting during the team's back-to-back wins last year against Stanford and Washington, it certainly wasn't a fluke or not by design.

While yes, a road trip to Oregon produced far different and more challenging issues than facing the Cardinal at home a month later, as the season progressed, the entirety of the defense looked leagues better in terms of communication, physicality, effectiveness on third down and overall performance.

A drastic move regarding CU's defensive playbook instituted last year helped to facilitate that and second-year coordinator Tyson Summers looks to pick up exactly where he left off on that note heading into the 2020 campaign.

“There is a large volume inside of our playbook," he said. "We have cut that playbook back, I would say, from the beginning of last season to now, I’d gather to say that 40% of our playbook is no longer in it. That is because we want to play with fundamentals and focus and we want to be really good at our base defense. Where we are continuing to move in the direction we talked about earlier about being multiple and attacking is trying to make sure we create challenging positions for offensive lines and quarterbacks.”

While the Buffs' secondary made some leaps as the year went on and Colorado's defensive line, despite injuries and greenhorns eating up a good amount of snaps, also seemed to improve with time, the simplifying of the playbook proved to be critical.

“Last year, towards the beginning, we were doing a lot on defense," said senior ILB Nate Landman. "We had a huge call menu and we were rotating in and out a lot of guys. This year, talking with coach Summers, we’ve kind of reduced the call menu down a little bit and that’s what we did towards the end of last season — getting really good at playing out base (defense) and then having a pretty wicked third down package.”

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As Landman seeks his third consecutive 100-tackle campaign in his final dance with the Buffaloes, he's began to work more closely with Summers about his own unique role within the defense.Long story short, Landman has built up enough trust with Summers that the latter is willing to give him a sizable rope when it comes to making in-the-moment decisions and/or audibles on the field.

“This year, I’ve developed a stronger relationship with coach Summers, who now is my position coach," Landman said. "We’re talking about me having a little more on-field freedom to make calls myself if I see something instead of always looking to the sideline. (We’ve talked) about me having more freedom to be more in control of the defense on the field and take advantage of what offenses are trying to do to us.”

There's undoubtedly been more than one defensive player to stress how impactful it has been and will continue to be keeping Summer aboard as defensive coordinator and Landman added his name to that list.

“It’s very important," he said. "Losing a head coach, you kind of lose stability and the rock that’s holding team together, but having the defensive coordinator stay on and be able to lead the defense is huge, especially for some of the young guys who were recruited by coach Summers...having coach Summers on and not having to put young guys through a new defense in my mind will be one of the biggest things that helps us that year.”