Karl Dorrell hopes to have Brenden Rice healthy and practicing before late

Colorado freshman wide receiver Brenden Rice undoubtedly finished up his debut 2020 season with the Buffaloes in a manner that created some hype and excitement surrounding what he would do this upcoming fall in year two at CU.

But while other wide receivers within his 2020 recruiting class and the position group in general have been seeing a lot of reps this spring, Rice has been a non-participant.

Few Colorado fans could forget Rice's breakout game against Utah on Dec. 11, Colorado's regular season finale.

Not only did Rice haul in a 61-yard touchdown pass from Sam Noyer, but he also found the endzone again on special teams, taking a punt 81 yards downfield to the house during the game.

Rice scored his first touchdown of the season in week two at Stanford, a game in which he had two catches for 38 yards.

In total, he caught six balls for 120 yards and a pair of touchdowns on the year.

Thus, expectations for the former four-star prospect from Chandler, Ariz. leading into his second year in Boulder were high.

Unfortunately for rice, though, he hasn't been able to participate with the Buffs in any of their spring practices to date, which, following Wednesday's session, will put Colorado over halfway through its 15 practices.

"He’s not clear to practice yet, but he’s out there watching," Karl Dorrell said. "It’s one of those things — if he doesn’t start practicing this week, he’s going to miss three weeks of spring practice. He’s behind, the way I look at it.

Dorrell confirmed that Rice suffered a hand injury before the team began its spring sessions that has sidelined him.

Additionally, while Dorrell did not specify if it was due to a case of COVID-19 outright or contact tracing protocol, that has been another factor that's kept Rice from gaining the necessary clearances to practice with his teammates.

“He needs to get back to practicing and playing," Dorrell said. "That’s his biggest challenge right now. He did have a dislocation on his finger and that was prior to spring practices and then COVID hit; he’s just now being cleared, passing through the COVID protocol."

Last Friday, Colorado conducted the first of its four spring scrimmages.

During the 20-25-play exercise, which had an emphasis on red zone offense and defense, the receivers taking the field with the first team offense were Vontae Shenault, Dimitri Stanley and Daniel Arias.

Stanley and Shenault were CU's two statistical leaders last year in receiving, with the former taking the top spot in yards (249) and receptions of more than 20 yards (4) while Shenault, despite missing the season opener vs. UCLA and the Valero Alamo Bowl due to suspension, led the team with 17 catches.

Arias managed five catches for 88 yards last fall and other than freshman Keith Miller III, is Colorado's tallest wideout at 6-foot-4.

Behind Shenault, Stanley and Arias entered an all-freshman unit of Miller III, Chris Carpenter and Montana Lemonious-Craig last Friday.

Theoretically, Rice likely would have seen himself among one of the two bunches of receivers seeing extended reps were he healthy and cleared to practice.

Nevertheless, Dorrell hopes to have him back before the end of the month.

"He has time to kind of get caught up; he’ll probably get a chance to practice the last couple weeks of spring and hopefully have a great summer going into training camp," he said. "We’ll see how things stack up but he is missing some valuable time. He’s just going to have to make it up on the back end."

While Dorrell acknowledged that it would have been optimal to have Rice go through a full spring, at the end of the day, his absences this month won't rule him out of the equation or bury him on the depth chart, something that coaches won't be finalizing for some time.

"There’s no determination in terms of who’s going to be our starting X or starting Z right now," Dorrell said. "That’ll all work itself out as we get through training camp.”