Scary punt returns grab Mac’s attention

BOULDER» The record might be perfect, but the Colorado football team is far from it three games into the season.

On Wednesday, the Buffaloes (30) returned to the practice field for the first time since their 4514 win against New Hampshire on Saturday, and while they have a bye this week, they aren’t basking in the glow of their start.

Pac12 Conference play begins a week from Friday, when UCLA (03) comes to Boulder, and CU coach Mike MacIntyre said this week is all about getting better.

“It’s a little bit on UCLA and a lot on us,” he said of the practice agenda this week. “We have a lot of things (to work on). We went back over all three games and looked at the different things we weren’t doing as well and we’re trying to fix those. Some of them were assignmentoriented, some of them were techniqueoriented, and working on all of that type of stuff.”

One area that has particularly frustrated MacIntyre is punt returns. The Buffs were a mess on their returns against New Hampshire.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in my 29 years of coaching; it’s the worst decisionmaking,” he said. “That’s my fault. We’ll make sure that gets corrected and we’ll be much better at it, I promise you.”

Sophomore Ronnie Blackmon has bigplay potential in that role, with 109 yards on 10 re turns so far. He’s already just the third CU player in the last eight years to hit 100 yards on for punt returns for a season.

However, he has also taken some dangerous risks and put the offense in difficult positions.

In the season opener against Colorado State, Blackmon fielded three punts within 5 yards of the goal line.

Last weekend, Blackmon flirted with disaster.

He let one New Hampshire punt roll before reaching down to pick it up a split second before two defenders tackled him. Later in the game, Blackmon let a punt hit around the 10yard line, tried to pick it up on the roll and, after finally corralling the ball, ran into the end zone and barely got out to avoid the safety. He was tackled at the 1.

Senior Donovan Lee had one opportunity to return a punt against New Hampshire and didn’t fare any better. He tried to catch a 60yard punt as he was sprinting toward the goal line, bobbled it and was tackled for a 4yard loss, pinning the CU offense at its own 5.

“They have to take team over individual and understand where they are,” MacIntyre said. “I’ve taken it over and I’m working on it all week. That’s one of our main goals for this (week).”

He added: “We need to make a big jump in this off week, because we’re not going to get another chance to do these type of things as hard as we need to do them when you play game after game after game for hopefully a lot (of weeks) in a row.”