Karl Dorrell says the Buffs aren't behind schedule despite not playing spring football

BOULDER — Colorado’s football program will have a new look this season.

Karl Dorrell is replacing Mel Tucker as head coach, he’s implementing a new offensive scheme and there will be a new quarterback running the offense.

To make matters tougher, Colorado’s entire spring football season was canceled.

It’d be safe to assume that the Buffs are behind their expected pace, right?

“I would say I don’t think I am behind at all,” Dorrell told the media Monday afternoon.

That sounds crazy considering the circumstances but give the coach a minute or two to explain himself and maybe he’ll convince you as he convinced me.

“If we would have had spring practice — which would have ended in April — after that quickly we would have done a quick recap of spring. Then, the coaches would be gone for a month recruiting in May,” Dorrell said.

Instead of going on recruiting trips, the coaches hosted virtual visits conducted over Zoom calls. Dorrell said that there have been at least 35 recruits who have taken a virtual visit. He also said that there may be situations where virtual visits could make sense in the future, even when recruits are allowed to take in-person visits. For example, if Colorado is late to offer a prospect who is close to coming to a decision, a virtual visit could be enough to prolong the recruitment until there is time for an in-person visit.

Zoom meetings have become a way of life for the Buffs. In the past, coaches may have been able to find time to host meetings with their players when they were on the road recruiting. It never happened because they didn’t have the technology. Now Dorrell says some of the coaches have become “experts” on Zoom.

But even if coaches could hold meetings from the road, the student-athletes would be too busy recovering from the spring season.

“That is a frame of time where the players would be finishing up finals and then there would be a three or four-week break before coming back for summer school,” Dorrell said. “They could work out on their own voluntarily but they would have just come out of spring practice. They would have gotten some rest, saw their family. So, we missed all that in terms of that time frame to decompress.”

This spring will go down in the history books for all of the wrong reasons, but the Buffs caught some scheduling breaks that allowed them to keep installing the systems.

“We went through March, April, May of just flat meetings,” Dorrell said. “They have been saturated with the information. I know our players are going to know what to do. We missed that time on the field to tune it up, to make it efficient, to make it work. It is that type of stuff of what we need as a program right now. So, when you say in terms of being behind, I feel we are well ahead. We are probably more behind in just being able to rep that information.”

Colorado desperately needs the extra meeting time to translate to the field, but it’s good to hear that the Buffs have had extra time to install the new offensive scheme. However, every other team in the Pac-12 has had the chance to set up the same meetings.

So, are the Buffs behind their peers because they have a new coaching staff?

“I think because of this pandemic everybody is in the same boat so it actually puts us on a level playing field, in my opinion.”