Colorado will conduct a light, shoulder pads-only walk through practice on Friday but in terms of preparation ahead of Saturday evening's season opener, the Buffs are all but finished.
All that remains is putting it together on the field.
Per Karl Dorrell, there were no major hiccups at practice on Thursday. A few housekeeping items Colorado will polish up on Friday, but other than that, it's all systems go leading into Saturday.
“It was another good practice — good preparation, good Thursday practice," he said. "We kind of recapped all of the game plan and all the different situations in a game from (being) backed up, to the red zone, to goal line, so it was a good review of all those things. I thought it was pretty sharp. There’s always something to clean up here and there and we have another day to do that, but we’ll be ready to roll on Saturday.”
Of course, the last time Dorrell stepped out on Folsom Field was in September of 2003, when a 21-of-31, 157-yard day at the office from Joel Klatt lifted CU to a 16-14 victory over UCLA, spoiling Dorrell's head coaching debut with his alma mater.
While his Colorado head coaching debut will be a bit toned down — a total of 920 fans, all family members of both the Buffs and Bruins players/staff, will be allowed at Folsom Field — Dorrell enters his long-awaited first competition at the helm without uncertainty or trepidation.
“(I’ll be) pretty locked in for (this) game," he said. "That’s usually how I am as a coach. It’s different when you’re a player than when you’re coached, but (I’ll be) pretty focused on what I need to get done in terms of what I think are the keys of the game, really seeing if we’re executing our assignments both on the offensive and defensive side from a schematic standpoint, paying attention to the clock — all those different things.”
While the Buffs won't have much of a home field advantage on account of aforementioned reasons, playing in an all-but-quiet stadium will be a challenge for CU and UCLA alike to generate their own hype and energy.
"That’s going to be hard on both teams," Dorrell said. "It’s going to be interesting how both teams adjust for that, but we're definitely at that point of playing for each other, playing for your family and those types of things that are really important. It’s just not going to have the (same) electricity as you can imagine.”
Dorrell indicated that both of his play callers — Darrin Chiaverini on offense and Tyson Summers — will handle their responsibilities on the field as opposed to the sixth level of Balch Fieldhouse.
With as much practice, preparation and implementation as possible conducted over the course of fall camp and this week, Dorrell is ready to turn things over to his players and see if they can manage to execute the game plan effectively.
"If I’m a betting man, I’m going to say I think we’re going to play very well," he said. "I’m very confident that these guys are excited to play, I know that they’re really working hard at mastering the information for us to execute well on Saturday night, so I’m very anxious to watch them play."
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