Co-coordinators o≠ to good start

boulder» Darrin Chiaverini and Brian Lindgren sat together in Lindgren’s office recently, sounding like old friends as they casually talked about all things football.

“Our personalities seem to mesh pretty well,” Chiaverini said.

The Colorado football program is banking on the two of them displaying that same level of comfort on a daily basis, because if the Buffaloes are to break their 10-year run of losing seasons, they need to get better on offense.

After a 2015 season that Lindgren described as “frustrating,” CU coach Mike MacIntyre made a change in the team’s offensive leadership.

Lindgren has been CU’s offensive coordinator the past three years, but MacIntyre hired Chiaverini away from Texas Tech in December. Chiaverini, a former CU wide receiver, and Lindgren will now operate as co-coordinators.

The new brain trust of the CU offense can’t wait to see what they can do in Boulder after a sputtering offense contributed to the Buffs finishing 4-9 overall and 1-8 in the Pac-12 in 2015.

“I’m excited Darrin is here,” Lindgren said. “He’s bringing a lot of good ideas and some confidence and some new blood in here. I think that’s going to be really good for us.

“I think it’s going to make me a better coach and I think it’s going to make us a better program, so I’m for it.”

Chiaverini has mutual admiration for Lindgren.

“He’s a great guy and he’s got good energy,” Chiaverini said. “I was impressed with him; he’s a very smart guy.”

Some may view the cocoordinator situation as a demotion for Lindgren, but he sees it as an opportunity for CU to get better and finally start winning.

“The bottom line is we weren’t as good as we needed to be on offense,” said Lindgren, who offered no excuses for CU’s decline on offense, despite a rash of injuries in 2015. “We’ve got to score more points and win more games.

“(Chiaverini) is going to bring in good players, he’s going to bring some knowledge of an offense that has really had some success and I’m going to have the ability to have access to that and learn from that. It was kind of a no-brainer of, ‘What is it going to take to get him?’ ”

At the moment, CU’s staff is primarily focused on recruiting because national signing day is Feb. 3, but Chiaverini and Lindgren have started the process of developing a plan on offense.

Lindgren said they have only “scratched the surface a little bit,” and that most of their work will have to wait until after national signing day.

Because of that, it’s too early to say what the CU offense will look like in the 2016 season, but it probably will be a hybrid of what CU and Texas Tech did in 2015.