The Mel Tucker defense has arrived in Boulder

BOULDER — The Colorado Buffaloes’ defense has been bad.

If you want to look at the points allowed by the Buffs in each of the last 18 games, go ahead. If you want to forget them because you remember just how painful those games were, feel free.

Here they are:

31.

27.

41.

42.

31.

30.

33.

Then Mel Tucker took over and fans expected change.

It didn’t happen.

31.

31.

30.

31.

35.

45.

41.

35.

31.

Then, all of a sudden, something changed.

13.

14.

So what did head coach Mel Tucker do to cut the point totals in half over the last two games?

He simplified.

Colorado went back to the basics, removing some of the playbook so there’s more time to go over everything that’s still included, according to senior Davion Taylor.

“We just practice it over and over and over again and then when Saturday’s come around, we just have fun with it,” Taylor said. “Go out there and just grind and have fun and hit somebody.”

Cutting out some of the plays might sound like cutting corners, or it might sound like the obvious solution to the blown assignments that plagued Colorado for most of the season, but the only thing that really matters is that it’s working.

The Buffs have allowed fewer than 15 points to consecutive opponents for the first time since they opened the 2017 season against Colorado State and Texas State.

Will this new, simpler playbook be more easily dissected by opposing coaching staffs? Maybe.

Is it something that Colorado will stick with next season? Who knows.

All that matters is that Tucker and defensive coordinator Tyson Summers have found a solution to a problem that may have persisted just a little too long.

That’s the game for coaches: Build and develop the best possible squad from January to August, then try to patch whatever holes emerge between September and November so that you get to keep playing in December.

Adapt. React. Readapt. Apt.

The report card in the “patching” aspect may not be as shiny as fans had hoped. Problems, like false starts and blown coverages, reared their heads early in the season and festered.

For Tucker and Summers, that may just be a sign of youth, a part of their growth as coaches.

What’s undeniable now, though, is that—at least for the moment—every hole on the CU defense is patched. It’s playing its best football in years and that’s because the game isn’t even about the players anymore. They aren’t college kids prone to mistakes, they’re cogs in a machine, each doing their part. They’re chess pieces.

Star linebacker Nate Landman thinks that’s why the Buffs’ pass rush was able to sack Washington quarterback Jacob Eason five times on Saturday. The Buffs set up the opposing offense to think pressure was coming from one side and then blitzed the other. They ran the same play just a few snaps apart, but with a tweak that caught the Huskies off-guard.

“It’s kind of a chess match and Coach Summers is great at doing that,” Landman said. “He’s got a vision in his mind and comes to the sideline and he knows what he’s calling before we’re even out there.”

This newly-vicious defense is giving a new personality to a team that desperately needed a change from its reliance on offensive star power.

This year is the peak of a longstanding tradition of talented wide receiver depth. Laviska Shenault is a superstar, KD Nixon is a perfect wingman and Tony Brown is has become a monster out of nowhere.

But a lot of Pac-12 teams have good receivers. And they always will.

Trying to win a conference by being better than your opponents at what they’re best at isn’t easy, but it’s what has happened ever since Colorado joined the Pac-12. (Except for maybe that one year they made the Alamo Bowl. Hmmm… makes you think.)

Taking away your opponent’s strengths, forcing them to play a new brand of football and then beating them down is the way to go.

That’s what winning football teams do.

That’s what Mel Tucker is here to do.