Buffs Review: Arizona State blows CU out to extend the losing streak

This is the fourth part in a series looking back on the 2021 season. Every couple of days we’ll review another game and work our way through the season.

The Colorado Buffaloes couldn’t keep up with the Arizona State Sun Devils in Tempe last September. The CU offense faltered while Jayden Daniels quarterbacked his team to a 35-13 win. The Buffs fell to 1-3 and the nightmare season continued.

Turning Point: CU gives up a quick score

The Buffs had a chance in this game. (It feels silly to write that about a 20+ point loss.)

Coming out of halftime, Jarek Broussard ripped off a couple of solid runs, Ty Robinson took a jet sweep 26 yards and Alex Fontenot provided a few 13-yarders to set up his own score. The Buffs were down 14-10, despite barely generating 100 first-half yards.

But Jayden Daniels picked apart the Buffs for a 6-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to answer CU’s score and extend the lead back to double-digits. CU never gave themselves a chance after that point.

3 Stars

Brady Russell – Colorado couldn’t get anything going in the run game… then the Buffs started running behind Brady Russell.

It’s rare the a tight end is the star of the game without catching a pass, but that’s exactly what happened. Russell opened up hole after hole in the most impressive performance in the early-going of the season.

Alex Fontenot – With no passing game to speak of, the other offensive star has to be running back Alex Fontenot. He did the heavy lifting on both of CU’s first two scoring drives and finished with 14 carries for 65 yards and a touchdown.

Nate Landman – This wasn’t Landman’s best game—he missed a couple of coverage and made some mistakes in coverage—but it wasn’t a great game for anybody except for guys like Tyrin Taylor and Marvin Ham who only played a handful of snaps.

But Nate’s bad games are still solid. He made 10 tackles. Six of those tackles counted as stops. He was still a solid centerpiece in a game in which the defense wasn’t at its best.

CU Spotlight: Colorado’s defense cracks

In Colorado’s first two games against FBS opponents, it played power-based offenses. Both Texas A&M and Minnesota wanted to win games on the ground, oftentimes out of heavy formations. CU gave up 10 points to A&M and held the Gophers to 13 points in the first 44 minutes before the floodgates opened.

Against Arizona State, the Buffs had a different challenge.

The Sun Devils run a spread option with a quarterback is who is just as dangerous as a runner as he is a passer. They put a bunch of receivers on the field and run pre-snap motions with jet sweeps, read options and other more modern concepts. (More on that later.)

In five first half drives, Arizona State scored two touchdowns and punted three times. All of those punts were from within a couple of yards of midfield. In the Pac-12 in 2021, that’s not too bad of a defensive performance. But the Buffs are capable of plenty more.

We learned two things about the CU defense in this game:

1. They aren’t perfect.To this point in the season the CU defense looked incredible. It stopped just about everything the Aggies and Gophers threw at it. (We’re throwing out the fourth quarter against Minnesota because of a mix of flukiness and a lack of help from the offense.)

   After this game, we realized that the defense shouldn’t be expected to hold a team to 14 points week-in and week-out although it was still, certainly, one of the Pac-12’s best groups.

2. Matchups matter.Colorado’s defense was built to stop the running and traditional pocket passing. (Being built this way is because of the defensive talent CU moreso than coaching decisions.) When Arizona State threw a running quarterback at it with all of the bells and whistles of a modern spread offense, the Sun Devils manufactured enough chunk plays to score fairly consistently.

   As we keep moving through the review of 2021, we’ll pay extra attention to how the Buffs build their defensive gameplan when they play spread offenses. Do they adjust or do they stick to their principles?

Opponent Spotlight: ASU’s short game

We’re digging a little bit deeper into what made Arizona State’s offense work.

The first piece is the screen game. Of the Sun Devils’ 18 complete passes, seven were screens. Those seven screens averaged an eight-yard gain. This was important because the Buffs’ largely shut down the ASU running game. When running backs carried the rock, they picked up 71 yards on 21 carries. That’s impressive, considering Rachaad White was a 1,000-yard rusher for the season.

When the Sun Devils ran the ball successfully it came from quarterback Jayden Daniels. He carried the ball seven times for 75 yards and two touchdowns. Two of those carries, including a 15-yard touchdown run, came on scrambles. Five of them were on read options.

When Arizona State threw the ball downfield, it didn’t throw the ball too far downfield. While the Sun Devils tried to take a couple of shots, their success came short in the middle of the field

The three things that worked for Arizona State—screens, short passes and quarterback runs—are all counters to a defense loading the box to stop the run. ASU hit the Buffs where they had a numbers advantage, and it worked.

Keep an eye on: Marvin Ham II

Colorado’s third-year freshman linebacker wasn’t on the field much—only six defensive snaps—but he made noise when he was on the field.

Ham took over at linebacker for the final ASU possession as time ran down, and he did well to fill running lanes. On the last play of the game, Ham read the pulling linemen and found his way into the backfield to make a tackle for loss.

This was Ham’s first action of the season, so we’ll see how his role expands throughout the season.