Which Buffs had the most to gain in spring practices?

The Colorado Buffaloes’ spring football season ahould be underway.

If not for the coronavirus outbreak, the Buffs would have held their first practice of 2020 early Monday morning. Instead, CU won’t practice until the last week of March, at the earliest, and there’s a chance the hiatus will extend longer.

It’s unlikely that any of the practices will be made up, so each one that is cancelled is a significant blow.

Nobody benefits from the lack of practice and meeting time, but there are a few people who are put in particularly difficult situations becasue of the coronavirus.

These are them:

KARL DORRELL

As a first-year head coach, Karl Dorrell has a lot of work to get done and much of it will be impacted by the lack of spring practices. The biggest problem will be his staff’s  inability to evaluate the players who are already on the roster.

Each practice is a chance to see what his players are capable of doing on the field and each meeting his a chance to test learning capabilities and evaluate who will be able to pick up their roles in new schemes before the season starts up.

While Dorrell and his staff can go back through the tape to see what players looked like on the field last season, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Some players didn’t play all that much, others were asked to fulfill different responsibilities than Dorrell will ask them to fill.

Putting your hands on the players and figuring out who can fit where is a vital part of pring football, especially for a new coaching staff.

Obviously, the recruiting restrictions are brutal as well.

DARRIN CHIAVERINI

Colorado’s new offensive coordinator has a lot to prove.

In his first run as a play-caller, Darrin Chiaverini’s offense sputtered on the way to a seven-game losing streak to end the 2018 season. That can’t happen again.

This time around, Chiaverini is missing out on half of the time he was alotted to install his playbook.

Chiaverini will send his team home with the playbook loaded onto their iPads and tell them to learn it all during the hiatus but it isn’t that easy. Some of the players have never learned an entire college playbook before and all of them would benefit from studying with teammates and coaches.

Plus, the spring practices are used as a test period. Anything that doesn’t work can be thrown out and replaced over the summer, before the team returns for fall camp. That option is now eliminated.

Chiaverini is also the Buffs’ highest-regarded recruiter, so he’s missing out on some of the most important time of his year.

NATE LANDMAN

Speaking of learning the playbook, nobody was more capable of teaching it to the youngsters than senior linebacker Nate Landman.

Although there will be ferwer changes to the defensive schemes, there were still plenty of improvements that needed to be made during spring ball.

Landman is a big-time NFL draft prospect and part of what he will be graded on is how well he runs his defense. It is his responsibility to make the checks and tweak the plays before each defensive snap. His job will be much easier if the rest of his defense has the chemistry to snap into new responsibilites quickly.

Plus, if he can get everybody else to do their jobs he will be freed up to just focus on his own role, holding down the middle of the defense.

BRENDON LEWIS

The Buffs’ true freshman quarterbak is going to be in a particularly tough spot because of the cancellations. Brendon Lewis was the favorite to be Colorado’s opening-day starter but he will now have his practice time cut in half.

Lewis should still be the favorite to land the starting job but the odds have shifted in Tyler Lytle’s favor. These next couple of months of work were going to be massive in Lewis’ development as a quarterback, in virtually every regard; learning the playbook, building chemistry with his receivers, working with college coaches, adapting to the college football lifestyle, etc.

Most freshman quarterbacks don’t arrive on campus until the fall semester anyway, but Lewis’ extra few months in Boulder could have been very important to his growth.

THE YOUNG RECEIVERS

All of the receivers will be worse-off for not being able to build chemistry with their new quarterback, but the burden especially harsh for the young ones.

Here’s why:

Guys like Vontae Shenault, Jaylon Jackson and others should have a leg up on the true freshmen, like Brenden Rice, because they get to start working with Lewis for two months before the others arrive on campus. They won’t be able to build chemistry this spring though because of the hiatus.

The playing field will be leveled for the true freshmen.

The receivers are also going to be working with new head coach Karl Dorrell, who is one of the top receivers coaches in football. Dorrell will still be around in the fall, but CU’s receivers could miss out on two months’ worth of meetings and practices with Dorrell.