Colorado’s rise faces another test
Buffaloes have much to prove against No. 6 Washington
Nobody really knows right now if “The Rise” is still real for the Colorado Buffaloes.
After their sudden, surprising climb last year into the national top 10, T-shirts are still for sale on campus that say “The Rise Is Real.”
But that was last year’s slogan. Those shirts have been pushed to the back shelf at the CU Book Store for $16.99 each. And they might not find any more buyers after Saturday unless the Buffs can do something they haven’t done in 10 years — beat a top-10 team.
“What we’re going to find out this week is how physical we can be,” said Colorado standout cornerback Isaiah Oliver, whose team faces Washington (3-0) here Saturday night in the Pac-12 Conference opener for both teams. “That’s where it’s going to start.”
The game will mark the first big test of whether last season was a one-hit wonder for this former college football powerhouse. It also will mark the first big test of whether Washington might be even better than last year, when the Huskies demolished the Buffs in the Pac-12 Conference championship game 41-10.
The Huskies look like they might be. They rank sixth in the Amway Coaches Poll and have the same quarterback, Jake Browning, who ranks seventh nationally in passing efficiency after finishing sixth last year in the voting for the Heisman Trophy.
“As a whole team, they are better than they were last year,” Oliver said.
Washington also has another emerging Heisman candidate this season — Dante Pettis, who has returned a punt for a touchdown in all three games and has tied the NCAA record with eight in his career.
The Buffs will have to decide how to punt to Pettis, if they kick to him at all.
“You kick it high, and you don’t have to worry about returns,” CU punter Alex Kinney told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday. “We’re just worried about kicking it high and kicking it far.”
Meanwhile, the Buffs know what happened in last year’s game. They were overmatched. The Huskies “just ran the ball down our throat” in the final 25 minutes, said Mike MacIntyre, Colorado’s fifth-year head coach.
At issue now is whether the Buffs can stop it this time. It’s hard to tell. The Buffs are 3-0 and knocking on the door of the top 25, ranking 28th in the coaches poll voting this week. But they’ve appeared underwhelming and inconsistent against inferior competition, including last week when they gave up three big touchdown passes in a 41-21 win against Northern Colorado, a Football Championship Subdivision program with fewer scholarship players.
The toughest team the Buffs have played, Colorado State, had more yards, first downs and sacks than CU and also fell victim to questionable offensive pass interference penalties that erased big gains in Colorado’s 17-3 win in the season opener.
Some of these kinks can be attributed to breaking in a new crew. Sophomore quarterback Steven Montez is replacing longtime starter Sefo Liufau, who signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an undrafted NFL rookie. Colorado also lost eight starters on defense, including several who went on to the NFL. Even the coach of that defense, Jim Leavitt, left to become defensive coordinator at Oregon, leading to yet more anxiety among the CU faithful about slipping back down their rocky mountain.
Now come the Huskies, averaging 47 points a game. Skeptics aren’t convinced CU can hang with them, based on last year’s game and this year’s performance.
“Everybody’s talking different about us,” MacIntyre said Tuesday. “There might be a negative thought or a negative vibe, or ‘Oh, they can’t do this …’ But I’m glad that we’re not celebrating and having parades in the street that we’re 3-0, that we want to do something better than that. And so hopefully we can.”
In a certain sense, this is all still a nice change for Colorado — having to answer about the sustainability of its success as it enters Pac-12 play with a home game on national television. The Buffs went 5-40 in the Pac-12 in their five previous seasons before finishing 10-4 overall last year, including 8-2 in league play. Ma- cIntyre’s wife reminded him of this the other day.
“She said, a few years ago, we’d just be happy we won,” MacIntyre said. “And so I think that’s a great thing for our program. I think that shows we’re at a different level as far as the expectations.”
They’ve gone up because of last year’s out-of-nowhere breakout season. After reminding the world that that it was in fact real, now there are questions about keeping it up at Folsom Field.
The slogans that are emphasized now are “Folsom Fast” and “Never Stop Rising,” which is emblazoned on T-shirts for sale at the front of the CU Book Store for $18.99 each. The latter is a continual aspiration instead of last year’s confirmation of the authenticity of CU’s revival, as displayed on those shirts at the back of the store.
But whether it stops or is really real again is a question likely to be answered to some degree Saturday night. “I feel like we really are ready for prime time, absolutely,” CU linebacker Drew Lewis said.
The game will be televised nationally on Fox Sports 1.
“You want to be at a program where there’s high expectations when you don’t play well,” said Darrin Chiaverini, CU’s co-offensive coordinator and former CU player. “I played here. That was the way it was when I was here, and we’re getting back to that point, and that’s a good thing. You’ve got to embrace pressure, and you’ve got to go out there and perform. That’s just the way it is.”