MacIntyre on Tate: 'We couldn't tackle him'

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It's not a secret why Colorado lost on Saturday. It doesn't take a football genius to figure out that Colorado's run defense was absolutely horrid and were gashed by big runs over and over again. The Buffaloes dropped to 3-3 on the season and 0-3 in the Pac-12 with the 45-42 loss.

Colorado allowed 425 rushing yards with 327 of those yards coming from Arizona backup quarterback Khalil Tate.

"Could someone please tackle No. 14 [Khalil Tate] for Arizona?" Colorado head coach Mike MacIntyre said. "That was the difference in the football game. He was amazing. He should be National Player of the Week. He’s a phenomenal player. I think they’ve found their quarterback now.

"We have to tackle No. 14. We had held up, we made him change direction and we stopped the original play multiple times and he just outruns us. We missed a few times. He made some great plays. Of course, we could have done better and coached better. We couldn’t tackle him."

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A bright spot in the game was the emergence of the offense finally playing a complete game. The Buffaloes scored touchdowns on their final four drives. But again, the offensive performance was overshadowed by the poor play on defense.

"The offense did everything they could," MacIntyre said. "After [Tate's] fourth time out there, I said 'I don’t know if we’re ever going to get this kid down.' We did everything we could. We tried. We’ve got to do a better job on defense of corralling the quarterback.

"I told the offense that we’re going to have to run the ball and keep them off the field as best we can. We turned into, about halfway through the second quarter – except when we had to kick the field goal – into four-down territory. Everywhere on the field, because we weren’t going to stop them. You could just tell. He was just dynamic."

Next up for Colorado is a road matchup with Oregon State, a team they crushed last season, but this time, the Buffs will be on the road.

"We’re going to come back to work on Monday like we always do," continued MacIntyre. "Every coach says that but you do do that. Our rallying cry will be we’ve got to keep ourselves up and keep being positive and be motivated. We’ve got to win some games here and the kids want to do that and they well."

With a 3-3 record and four of their final six games on the road, Colorado might go from Pac-12 South champs to a team that doesn't make a bowl game.

"I definitely think we’ll be in a bowl game," MacIntyre said. "That’s what we need to do. That’s what we can hope we can do.