Well, they can’t all be as perfect as that first one and I’m sure the final score would have been a lot closer except for those four fumbles Nebraska coughed up—three lost. But give Colorado credit, in spite of a really rough 1st Qtr and most of the 2nd—punting on their first four possessions—they finally got it going with less than six minutes left in the half, putting up two field goals and a 30 yard Shedeur Sanders TD pass to Tar’Varish Dawson to go up 13-0 at the break and scoring on four of their first five possessions in the 2nd half.
Nebraska did a great job most of that first half of taking away Sanders’ targets which, instead of just checking down or taking the opportunity to run, resulted in him hanging onto the ball way longer than he should have leading to 8 Nebraska sacks and 11 tackles for loss. With Colorado running a modified Air Raid offense he needs to dump that ball off within 2 or 3 seconds, like he did in the first game against TCU, and I’m sure that will get cleaned up before their meeting this next Saturday against Colorado State. If not, I can’t imagine Shedeur lasting the season getting sacked that many times per game. In spite of all the pressure, the Colorado signal caller still connected on over 70% of his passes for just seven ticks under 400 yards, 2 TD’s and no interceptions in addition to a 6 yard dash to the end zone to put the Buffaloes up 36-7 with just under five minutes left in the game.
Colorado’s talented Freshman RB Dylan Edwards, who picked up just 55 yards in this one, reminds me a lot of Max Borghi who was a RB in Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense at Washington State—a RB I thought Leach could have exploited a bit more. Picking up just 58 yards on the ground in this one I feel the same way. Running Edwards more will force Colorado’s opponents to put more folks on the line and thus freeing up more targets for Shedeur to throw to which should get that ball out of his hands faster. But I will say, if Colorado’s sputtering first half offense can improve as much as their defense did from the game against TCU where they gave up 262 yards and 4 TD’s on the ground then they should be fine. In this one the Cornhuskers still rushed for 222 yards but the Buffaloes reduced the average per carry by 2 yards and stiffened up in the red zone limiting Nebraska to just one rushing TD compared to the four they allowed the previous week. They’ll need to continue to make improvements in their run defense as most teams will struggle against their very talented secondary led by two-way player Travis Hunter. In this one the Nebraska starting QB, Jeff Sims, connected on 9-of-15 for just over 100 yards, no TD’s and one interception. After a fumble by Sims at the end of the 3rd Qtr Nebraska brought in their back-up Sophomore QB Heinrich Haarberg who was finally able to get the Corn Huskers a passing TD with time running out in the game when he connected in the end zone with WR Thomas Fidone to give us our final score, 36-14.