As of right now, it is up in the air whether K.D. Nixon will make his 2020 debut on the road at Stanford this Saturday afternoon.

Nixon, who through retrospective inference can be fairly deduced to have not been at 100% health throughout at least the final stages of fall camp, ultimately was not close enough to being good to go for Karl Dorrell to play him against UCLA last weekend.

Dorrell indicated that Nixon could indeed play on Saturday, although his status remains uncertain.

Granted, it still is early in the week and the way Dorrell put it, Nixon's return to action is more likely than that of center Colby Pursell and STAR backer Chris Miller, both of whom were described by Dorrell as 'doubtful' to play against the Cardinal.

"As for K.D. Nixon, he’s going to be listed weekly, day-to-day," Dorrell said. "He’s close to full speed and we’re going to continue to see what he looks like this week and make a determination later in the week."

With Nixon's status up in the air, if the Buffs decide to be cautious with him and he doesn't play at Stanford, it's likely that Dorrell might turn to two of his true freshman receivers, Montana Lemonious-Craig and Brenden Rice, to assume a heavier workload in the veteran's absence.

Who knows — Nixon very well may play, but to speculate, even if he does, he may do so on something of a reduced snap count.

Junior Maurice Bell played on 88% of Colorado's offensive snaps vs. UCLA while sophomore Dimitri Stanley was on the field for about 63% of CU's plays on offense.

Rice played 14 snaps and notched his first career reception, a five-yard catch on the left sideline in the third quarter.

He caught the ball two yards ahead of the line of scrimmage and gained a further three yards after the catch for his lone target of the game.

Out of Rice's snap count, he spent nine on the field on run block duty, for which he earned a PFF grade of 61.0.

Lemonious-Craig was not targeted during the game and of his 12 snaps, he ran a route five times and was used as a blocker seven times, the later duty earning him a PFF grade out of 60.5.

Rice and Lemonious-Craig wound up with the highest PFF scores on run block duty of any Colorado receiver.

Now, of course, their play count was far smaller than their peers (Stanley on 25 blocking assignments scored a 46.3; Daniel Arias on 48 run block plays scored a 45.2) but those numbers look promising.

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Both players seem to have put their size — Rice is 6-foot-3 and Lemonious-Craig is 6-foot-2 — to good use in neutralizing opposing DBs and keeping them away from Colorado's running backs.

Dorrell liked what he saw in terms of a first impression from two of his highly-regarded 2020 recruits.

"Both those guys I felt played solid for their first game," he said. "I won’t say they played great, but they played solid."

Nixon, for his part, has continued to provide a veteran's approach to bettering the position group as a whole, even as he's been unable to contribute on gameday.

"I think K.D. has done a great job with his leadership and experience in that room, just telling them that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s playing — we expect high standards and expectations of being productive, doing your role and performing the way that the offense is supposed to perform,'" Dorrell said.

At the end of the day, Nixon very well might play Saturday and he certainly could be capable of handling a full workload.

There's also Vontae Shenault to consider, as he now can return to action after serving a one-game Dorrell-imposed suspension due to the former's arrest on suspicion of DUI in Fort Collins back in July.

Both of these factors could have a ripple effect with respect to how much we see the likes of Rice and Lemonious-Craig this weekend.

In any event, Dorrell was impressed with their first collegiate action and believes both will be ready to answer the call in whatever volume that ends up being.

"Right now, I think the mentality of that room is ‘next man up,’" Dorrell said. "Whomever is down and with the next guy up, we’re expecting to have a similar, high-level performance that the player that was the starter would have done. I think those guys had an encouraging start and I think they’ll continue to get better as we continue to march through this season.”

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