Friday's scrimmage in Boulder — the Buffaloes' third of a total of four they'll conduct this spring — was closed to the media, but be that as it may, a postgame Zoom session with Karl Dorrell provided some sense of how it all went down.
Below are some notes, quotes and highlights from Friday's action.
Offensively, Dorrell opted to go for more of a situational feel: two-minute sequences and also something drawn up to simulate a sort of desperation situation where the offense was approaching scoring position but was in need of seven points.
In total, Colorado ran roughly 60-65 plays, per Dorrell.
“We did some two-minute (situations) today and some optional stuff which I’d say (was) ‘last-minute offense,’ which, we put (the offense) in a scenario with 40 seconds left, the offense had no timeouts and they were on the 35-yard line but they needed a touchdown," Dorrell said.
"The defense held them in that situation out of a touchdown. I think the defense was a little bit better and ahead on that.”
Dorrell revealed that there was a total of three interceptions recorded by the defense Friday, one by freshman corner Tyrin Taylor, grad transfer ILB Robert Barnes and junior ILB Jon Van Diest.
Colorado's second-year head coach mentioned earlier this spring that in his experience, usually the defense is firing on all cylinders to a higher degree than the offense in spring.
The way he described CU's third scrimmage of the spring Friday evening seemed to allude to just that, with the offense —specifically the quarterbacks — performing in a manner that wasn't exactly anything to write home about.
Not that all the blame fell on the QBs, though. Dorrell detailed that it was a bit of an off day for the receiving corps, as well.
“I would say there were mixed results," Dorrell said. "In the two-minute (situation), which, like I said, we just installed that today, the first time scrimmaging that was a bit of a challenge. We (also) had some dropped passes in that period."
As Dorrell alluded to, it might be best to consider the offensive sample size, from the quarterbacks' point of view, a mixed bag.
The interceptions seemed to dictate the day's work, enough to where freshman Brendon Lewis, junior JT Shrout, walk-on freshman Grant Ciccarone and freshman Drew Carter would have chalked it up as less than impressive.
"I thought (the QBs) did some positive things throughout the day," he said. "There were some interceptions today, some of them were tipped interceptions, off a receiver’s hand (and) the defense was right there to recover. But I thought they played OK."
"I’m sure if you asked B-Lew, JT, Grant and Drew...they’ll say that they didn’t have a great day.”