BOULDER — Plenty of questions surround the Colorado Buffaloes as they head into the 2020 season, ranging from “How will the new coaching staff handle a shortened offseason?” to “Will there even be a season?”
But only one question has existed for years: “Who will be Colorado’s opening day starting quarterback in 2020?”
Steven Montez broke out with a 333-yard performance as a freshman against Oregon in September 2016. He played sporadically in 2016 but was the presumed starter when senior Sefo Liufau graduated after the season. Since then, he’s been a lock for the starting lineup.
But Montez is now with the NFL’s Washington Redskins and there’s a competition to replace him.
New quarterbacks coach Danny Langsford’s first major task as quarterbacks coach is helping to pick a starter out of senior Sam Noyer, junior Tyler Lytle and true freshman Brendon Lewis.
“Obviously if you could choose, you’d take a three-year starter but these guys are hungry, they are willing to learn,” Langsdorf told reporters last week. “There is going to be heavy competition within the group so I think that is really good. They are going to have to bring their best every day to be able to show us that they’re good enough to win the job. We have to do it in a hurry to get our group going.”
The clock is ticking down, and not just until the season starts. Colorado needs a quarterback in place at least a week or two before the Rocky Mountain Showdown so the playbook can be tailored to best fit whoever wins the job.
“If you are trying to put a square peg in a round hole, you are going to have issues,” Langsford said. “There are going to be some things schematically, system-wise that we’ll want to do with all of them but we don’t want to get into a situation where we’re trying to do something and a guy is really struggling with it. That is not fair to him or our team.”
Langsdorf said that the coachings staff would build the offense around the starter and, eventually, build a package for the backup as well. If the competition is too tight to name a true No. 1, then “we’ll have a package for each of them and see what happens from there.”
So far, Langsdorf’s work with the quarterbacks has been almost exclusively via Zoom video calls. He said he’s had good conversations with the group about the playbook and when talking through film sessions.
That’s only half of the equation, though.
“Physically we have a ways to go,” Langsdorf said. “I don’t know what to think yet. We have been so limited that way with them being gone. That will be interesting to get up to speed with. I am anxious for that. But I have appreciated the effort and the interaction we’ve had as a group.”
While the competition is going to grab the headlines, the most important part of the season for Langsdorf will be how he develops whichever quarterback is chosen. If any of the three can take significant steps throughout the season, there’s no reason Colorado can’t be competitive.
“I have some pretty strong opinions on footwork and timing,” Langsdorf said. “But if they are playing hard with good effort, I think the fundamentals can always be worked on. There is always a different style with people fundamentally so I am not going to go in and revamp a senior’s throwing motion or some kind of crazy thing like that. But we will definitely try to improve and tweak and help these guys be better and be open to the different ways they’ve learned and been taught. That is just a part of teaching and being a good coach is adapting to what they know and how I can help them be better.”
Although Langsdorf has plenty of tasks on his plate, the focus is going to be on how he runs the quarterback competition. Luckily, Langsdorf explained what he values in a young quarterback, and that could give us a hint at what to expect.
Colorado was a favorite to land four-star quarterback prospect Clay Millen, who signed with Arizona last week, and Langsdorf was a key piece of CU’s recruitment. Coaches can’t speak publically about recruits until they sign due to NCAA policies, but they can speak broadly about what they’re looking for in a recruit.
Here’s what Langsdorf had to say about that topic:
“I put a lot of emphasis on being accurate. If you are spraying balls all over the place, it makes it hard as a thrower. So they need to be accurate. I believe they need to have enough athletic ability where they can get themselves out of trouble. You need to be a good thrower and have that element of escapability. I have had a few statues in the past and they were exceptional throwers. That allowed them to be good players. As the game continues to progress in the quarterback run game, you’d like to have a guy that can run around. I think that is a definite advantage. I think it is harder to pressure those guys. They don’t have to be, but a guy that runs a 4.5 is definitely a bonus. We’re looking for an accurate thrower first that has enough arm strength and enough escapability that they can help us out. Those are probably the biggest elements I am looking for.”
Lewis figures to be the best athlete at quarterback, though neither Lytle nor Noyer is a sieve in that area. The accuracy is much tougher to gauge, but at least we know what questions to ask when camp ramps up in about one month.
