Jon Embree’s playing days at the University of Colorado from 1983-1986 saw the Buffaloes improve from Big Eight cellar dweller to an up-and-coming team ready to give conference heavyweights like Nebraska and Oklahoma a shot every year.

From there, a foundation was laid that would eventually help take CU to back-to-back Orange Bowl appearances for the 1989 and 1990 seasons, with the Buffs winning a National Championship in the latter year.

Embree was a member of Bill McCartney’s inaugural recruiting class in 1983 and was one of only three true freshmen not to redshirt that year.

The Buffs went 5-17 during his underclassman campaigns of 1983 and 1984 but by the time he was selected in the sixth round of the 1987 NFL Draft by the L.A. Rams following his senior season, Colorado’s trajectory as a program had been significantly altered for the better.

The teams Embree played on were something of a vanguard within the McCartney era at CU from 1982-1994.

The challenges, frustrations and trial and error surrounding McCartney’s early teams and in particular his wishbone offense — instituted prior to the 1985 season, which later evolved into the I-formation and I-bone schemes run by the likes of Sal Aunese and Darian Hagan — were shouldered by Embree’s units.

In 1984, Embree as a sophomore tight end had led the Buffs with 680 yards of receiving, earning First-Team All-Big Eight and Third-Team All-American honors for a CU team that went 1-10.

When McCartney decided to transition Colorado’s offense to the wishbone — a move that would result in the Buffs going from passing the ball 50% of the time in 1984 to 12% in 1985 — Embree knew that if he opted not to transfer, he’d have to make a multitude of sacrifices for the greater good of the team.

“There were a lot of personal goals that I had that I felt weren’t going to be attained,” he said. “My dad was pretty adamant about me leaving. I was confused and conflicted.”

Ultimately, it was trust in McCartney and the straight shooting manner in which he told Embree about what the Buffs’ offense of the immediate future was going to look like that quickly convinced him to stay put.

“When Mac explained to me why he was doing it — to give us the best chance to win — and he explained to me why, after we had about the third conversation on that, I was all in,” Embree said. “I knew I could go a month without catching a football. I knew and understood all that but I believed in what he was saying and why this was the best way for us to win.”

“I felt like, ‘you know what, if you’re talented enough to play in the NFL, they’ll find you.’ I didn’t worry about that. I wasn’t going to be an All-American — I just had to turn and bear it. I bought in.’”

After his CU playing days, Embree enjoyed an NFL career with the Rams from 1987-1988. He rejoined the Buffs as a volunteer coach in 1991 and from 1993-2002, oversaw CU’s tight ends (1993-1994, 1999-2000), defensive ends (1995-1998) and wideouts (2001-2002).

Embree served as head coach of his alma mater in 2011 and 2012 and has since gone on to earn a name for himself as one of the premiere tight ends coaches in the NFL.

With stints as tight ends coach at Kansas City, Washington, Cleveland and Tampa Bay under his belt, Embree has settled in as assistant head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, for whom he’s also overseen the tight ends room since 2017.

Embree’s son Taylor is currently following in his father’s footsteps and after working alongside him as a quality control coach for the 49ers, was put in charge of CU’s tight ends shortly after Karl Dorrell was hired as the 27th full-time head coach at Colorado this past February.

Even now, over three decades since his college football career ended, Embree still is quick to identify how formative those years under McCartney were for him, particularly in how he sacrificed a place in the spotlight when the Buffs switched to the wishbone offense.

“It made me a man, plain and simple,” he said. “It taught me that it’s not about you. When you’re a father, when you’re a husband — it’s not about you. It’s about your family. When you don’t want to go work because you don’t like your job — it’s not about you. It helped me understand what it meant to be a man and see things through.”

“At the end of the day, when you commit to something, you see it through. It’s easy to be big on those things and never be tested. I was definitely tested.”

Embree enjoyed a successful high school football career at Cherry Creek and was a key target of McCartney’s as he looked to end a recruiting dry spell for the Buffs, beginning with landing in-state talent.

McCartney’s talent at connecting not only with the recruit, but the recruit’s parents, was on full display when he visited the Embree residence in 1983.

“He was very impressive,” Embree recalled. “He came in — he was the only coach out of all the home visits, that after they left, I could tell that my mom was hoping I would go to school there. All the other ones, I don’t even know if she sat through the entire home visit.”

Embree had more than a few big-time offers — he visited Arizona State, Oregon was after him as was UCLA — but despite the lack of a recent winning tradition in Boulder, he decided he wanted to play for the Buffs and work to craft such a tradition himself.

“One of the things that drew me to (Boulder) was an opportunity to build something and create a legacy as opposed to going somewhere else like Ohio State or UCLA where you’re just another piece,” he said.

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Embree described McCartney's strategy during his early years as CU’s head coach — years that produced seven wins as opposed to 25 losses from 1982-1984 — as making sure the Buffs were taking “incremental steps” in the right direction.

While beating Nebraska undoubtedly was a primary goal for every Colorado team that McCartney coached, in the mid-1980s, the Buffs had to first aim a bit lower and begin punching up towards middle of the pack Big Eight teams.

“Before you set your sights on Nebraska and Oklahoma, you start with beating Kansas and Missouri and Iowa State — let’s make those automatic W’s,” Embree said. “Then we can start focusing on the next step. It was a process that he instilled in us. We all believed in him.”

“We never wavered in our belief that things were going to get changed and turned around. It was just going to be a process.”

Embree’s first collegiate start came during his true freshman season in 1983, when the 2-4 Buffs travelled to Lincoln to face No. 1 Nebraska.

Colorado trailed just 14-12 at halftime, but when the clocks read all zeroes, the Huskers had slipped away to a dominating 69-19 victory, having scored an astounding 48 points in the third quarter.

The Buffs lost to Nebraska in 1984, 24-7, and had a close-but-no-cigar 17-7 loss to the Huskers for Embree’s junior matchup in 1985.

“They were what we were striving to be better than,” Embree said. “When we competed against them, we found out whether we were closing the gap or not.”

By the end of Embree’s senior year in 1986, Colorado indeed was proving the gap against Nebraska was closing.

The Buffs defeated the No. 3-ranked Huskers in Boulder on Oct. 25 and rebounded from an 0-4 start to the year, enough of a salvage operation to play for a Big Eight title against No. 4 Oklahoma on Nov. 15.

Colorado pulled off some significant damage control following a straight month of losses and finished the year at 6-6.

Oklahoma defeated CU, 28-0, for the Big Eight title and the Buffaloes lost to Baylor in the Bluebonnet Bowl, but within the McCartney era, a new level of success had been reached and a new level of expectations had been established.

“We just didn’t blink and that was because of him instilling it in us for years,” Embree said. “That was a true test for us of ‘Do you buy into what he’s selling? Do you believe in yourself and what this program is trying to do?’ We went and played Oklahoma that year for the Big Eight championship. We didn’t win it, but for the first time of now it was kind of like ‘Here we go.’”

Embree and the first generation of McCartney’s players were a few years removed from the 1990 Buffaloes team that captured Colorado’s lone National Championship in football, yet they played a significant role in leaving CU’s football program in better shape than what they walked into.

After all, by the time Embree and his Class of 1983 were upperclassmen, McCartney was well under way in identifying priority targets for his 1987 and 1988 classes.

When those recruits came to Boulder to check things out, it was Embree and his teammates doing much of the socializing and hosting.

The Buffs’ players at the time, Embree included, took great pride in doing their individual part in making good impressions on recruits and helping McCartney to land players.

“It was a unique thing — part of it was competitiveness,” Embree said. “If you got a (recruit) and you were his host and he didn’t come (to Colorado), you took it personally. Who can get the most guys? I remember the first guy I hosted that we got and was a really good player for us was (fullback) Anthony Weatherspoon. I remember hosting Spoon and us getting him.”

“There was (split end) JoJo Collins, (halfback) J.J. Flanigan — (strong safety) Tim James — there were a lot of guys that became great players for us and it was a very competitive environment when you’d host them.”

McCartney’s early teams were forged by early defeats and sustained through trust in their head coach as well as the noticeable progress from 1984-1986.

The result was a desire among McCartney’s current players to keep the team trending in the right direction.

“When you are on the same page as your coaching staff and you’re preaching the same message, and (recruits) see that it really is a family — when they see that it really is about the program and being a part of something bigger than yourself — you get those right kinds of people that are great players...you help the program continue to take incremental steps,” Embree said.

For as intensely Embree and his teammates desired to help bring the best players possible to Boulder, they were also quick to identify bad apples that wouldn’t blend with McCartney’s culture.

As players — Embree prominent among them — who had made significant individual sacrifices on behalf of the greater good for the team, recruits who prospectively would not be willing to do the same stuck out like sore thumbs.

“Back in the day, you couldn’t just go home or go places on spring break,” Embree said. “It wasn’t like that back then. (Your teammates) are who you were with and around 90% of your time for four years. The coaches looked at it like that too. There were some (recruits) who came through and the players were like ‘nah, he can’t be on our team. He’s not made of the right stuff.’”

“It wasn’t a talent issue but he wasn’t a fit. He wasn’t about the things that we were about. I just think the whole dynamics on how it was all interwoven and how coach Mac created a singular vision and took time to develop that vision to keep improving things — that’s how we got to where we were.”

The effort Embree and the Buffs players of the mid-1980s put in on the recruiting visit front stemmed from respect for McCartney and his vision.

They were also eager to see that the next generation of McCartney's prospects could continue to enhance the foundation of success that was laid before them.

“Mac used to say ‘passing the torch.’ When you’re passed the torch, you’re obligated that the flame grows even brighter and hotter than the person that gave it to you,” Embree said. “When you’re passing the torch to someone else, they understand the responsibility of them accepting that torch and understanding — Mac literally would bring in a torch and he’d have seniors pass it.”

“It legitimately gave people a visual that allowed people to understand the responsibility that’s being handed down to them. Don’t mess it up. That was the lesson.”

When Colorado beat Notre Dame, 10-9, in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, 1991, it was an achievement that Embree and the generation of Buffs who played with him could also share in and relish.

“We helped set the trajectory with other people that I came in with to getting that program to do something that it’d never done,” Embree said. “To me, that’s so rewarding. It’s more rewarding than being all-conference and (individual) records. It really is.”

“You’re not around to see the results of getting the fruits of that labor, so to speak, but it felt like you were winning the National Championship just as much as you were if you were on the team.”

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