"People are going to get beat up": Buffs quarterbacks preparing for season-long battle

BOULDER – Sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get out of a redshirt freshman quarterback.

One year ago today, this would be written about Steven Montez and some people would’ve shaken it off as if he wasn’t going to make an impact. No one would’ve guessed that Montez would burst onto the scene when Sefo Liufau went down and pick up one of the most important victories of the season at Oregon while setting a CU record.

So here we are, a year into the future and the Colorado Buffaloes already know what they have in Montez, their starting quarterback, and now they’re trying to figure out what they have in Sam Noyer, who is the next man up if something were to happen to Montez.

“I thought he was going to be a good player all along,” head coach Mike MacIntyre said when asked if Noyer has met expectation during fall camp. “He was a really good basketball player, a really good baseball player, excellent pitcher. He kind of did everything. I love his mechanics on his throwing arm. And I see an excellent athlete that can really throw it. Sam’s doing basically what I thought he’d be doing at this time.”

Noyer’s athleticism is they key to his skill set as a quarterback. He excels at using his feet to extend plays and he has the arm to go with it. Co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Brian Lindgren, considers Noyer the fastest out of the quarterbacks.

“He’s got a really big arm,” Lindgren said of his young quarterback. “He’s an accurate thrower and at the same time he’s one of the fastest guys that we have had, he’s the fastest guy in the group. So if he gets out of the pocket or we have a designed run I think he’ll have the opportunity to turn it into a big play.”

What people forget about the Oregon game is the impact that the Michigan game made on the Buffs the week before, especially on Montez because he struggled at Michigan and admits he wasn’t ready. Montez had to learn on the fly how to be a Pac-12 quarterback and that should help Noyer out when understanding what his role will look like in 2017.

“I definitely think it was a great lesson for him to understand that you can be in there anytime,” MacIntyre said on if Noyer learned from Montez’s experience. “And he saw how Steven responded on that and how Steven did really well sometimes and other times he wasn’t quite ready coming off the bench. So I think that helped Sam because he was right there with him signaling and sees [Montez] take the signaling shirt off and there he goes and now [Noyer]’s signaling to him. And [Noyer] goes, ‘That could be me next year’ and it will be, there will be times that people are going to get beat up.”

The 6-foot-4, 210-pound backup quarterback will have to learn on the fly this season but he’s also been working all summer and fall on his preparation and he’s carrying a different attitude with him this season.

“Obviously it’s definitely a lot different,” Noyer said on going from a fourth string quarterback to the backup. “I mean sitting in meetings your mindset changes a little bit, just knowing to be ready for it if something does happen you just always have to be ready. I think my mindset has been just going in those practices and acting like I am that starting guy, that this is my team.  And I think that is helping me a lot throughout this fall camp and I think it’ll help me going into the season.”

There’s a lot that goes into being a quarterback, but the most important thing is knowing the playbook better than everyone else. Noyer has spent most of his time this summer with his head in the playbook trying to get every play ingrained into his head.

“I think the biggest thing was just learning the playbook,” Noyer explained. “You know I had a good feel for it last year and last spring. but I think this year just learning the playbook was the biggest thing that I needed to work on. You know once that happens I think everything slows down from there so the mechanics can take over and you can just play football. So just knowing where my check downs are and just knowing what to do with the ball now that I have the playbook down now and just small things like that.”

Noyer has all the tools to be a very reliable backup. He understands his role, he’s really good at hitting his first read with accuracy and he’s a menace to deal with when he’s outside of the pocket because of his incredible athleticism. As we saw last season, it’s just a matter of time before we see him on the field for the Buffaloes and from everything out of camp, he’s more than capable of getting the job done.