BOULDER — It actually happened.
Way back on December 7, Colorado head coach Karl Dorrell was asked whether we’d seen Jarek Broussard at full strength. Two days earlier, Broussard had run for 301 yards at Arizona, bringing his season total over the 700-yard mark in four career games. He’d already earned two Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week awards.
So there was no way that Karl Dorrell was going to say we hadn’t seen the best of Broussard, right?
“I’m telling you, you haven’t,” Dorrell said, laughing. ““He’s probably 90-95 percent.”
And it actually happened: Jarek Broussard got better.
Broussard has torn his ACL twice in his career and those injuries had kept him off the field at Colorado until last season. Since one of the injuries was so recent, Broussard wore a knee brace.
During Dorrell’s media availability on Wednesday, following the second of 15 spring practices, he was asked about Broussard. Dorrell said that he hadn’t seen Broussard with the brace since the season ended and that the change was obvious.
“He got rid of the Linus blanket,” Dorrell said. “He’s been training this whole offseason without it. He looks fabulous. He looks faster, which is what we all anticipated he would be without a brace. Looks good.”
Broussard spoke to the media after practice, too, and he explained why he decided to ditch the brace.
“Looking at film from last year I’ve noticed that the brace restricted a lot of things,” Broussard said. “So this spring I’m going without the brace to try to see how it’s different.”
The results, as Dorrell also noted, have been positive.
“Honestly, I feel a lot better, I feel a lot faster, I feel more elusive,” Broussard said. “So right now it’s going good.”
A better, faster and more elusive Jarek Broussard sounds like a dream for Colorado but through two practices, all signs are pointing in the right direction. Better yet, his mind is in the right spot, too.
“Now that I have played—I kind of scratched the surface a little bit—I can honestly say my confidence has skyrocketed,” Broussard said. “I’m being more vocal as a leader. I’m getting the guys in the RBs room all on the same page.”
Not bad for a guy who, as he put it, “wasn’t even listed on the season preview.”
The elephant in the room is that there are at least two starting running backs in Boulder and and there’s only one ball. With Alex Fontenot back at full strength and talented freshman Ashaad Clayton carrying a year of experience under his belt, Broussard may not be able to carry the ball 30 times per game again in 2021. If he does, somebody in the locker room will probably disappointed.
Broussard and the other running backs are close knit a close-knit group, though, and they believe there will be enough opportunities to go around.
“All of us talk about what I did the past year; standing back, staying patient, waiting my turn and just making the most of my opportunity” Broussard said. “That’s what the rest of the group will do. When Joe Davis’ name is called, he’s gonna ball. When Alex’s name gets called again, he’s gonna ball. That’s just the standard that we hold each other to in our running back room.”
Good stuff.
And about that 301-yard night in Arizona, Broussard was caught from behind twice on runs that would have been touchdowns if he was any faster. Broussard’s performance was fourth all-time on the CU single-game leaderboard. If he’d found his way into the end zone on those two runs, he would have earned at least the 16 yards needed to move up to second on the leaderboard.
With his newfound speed and elusiveness could he have found 26 more yards and taken the all-time record from Charlie Davis?
I don’t know. But it’s fun to think about.
