Clay Patterson wants Colorado's passing attack to be fun again

BOULDER — Clay Patterson jumped at the opportunity to serve as Colorado’s passing game coordinator.

The 39-year-old has previously held bigger roles but they all came at a much lower level of college football; he was the offensive coordinator at Texas A&M-Kingsville and at Trinity Valley Community College. He was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M.

While taking on the passing game coordinator job at a Power 5 school is a big-time responsibility, revamping Colorado’s passing game is going to take some elbow grease.

“We want to put our guys in a situation to be successful and to be efficient,” Patterson said. “It’s not so much what we’re gonna do, it’s how we’re going to do it.”

How the Buffs are going to do it isn’t clear yet.

Patterson, who served as Minnesota’s tight ends coach for the past three season, is following CU’s new offensive coordinator Mike Sanford from Minneapolis to Boulder. Being with Sanford was a big reason Patterson was so excited to join the Buffs.

“I’m excited to be with him. Obviously that was a huge draw for me coming to Colorado,” Patterson said. “We have like beliefs in what we believe in. I’m extremely, extremely excited.”

While their core beliefs might be similar, how they set up their past passing attacks has been very different.

“His football background is similar to mine, but different,” Patterson said. “He’s an underneath center—Boise State, Stanford—guy. I’ve been a spread guy my whole life. Combining that is going to be really fun.”

CU figures to run a West Coast offense with a variety of different setups. Every coach on the offensive staff has experience in multiple offenses, which means the Buffs should be versatile. We’ll get hints about what the new offense will looking during spring ball, which starts March 30. The spring game will provide further clues, as will fall camp. But we won’t know what the offense will look like for sure until games start in September.

But Buffs fans will be praying for the next seven months that it won’t look anything like last year’s.

“The most important part is protecting our quarterbacks—especially young quarterbacks—and put them in a good situation, get the ball to playmakers in space,” Sanford said. “I’m a firm believer that great players make great coaches but at the end of the day you have to put your players in the situation to be successful no matter their skill level. It starts with that for us: put them in a situation to be successful.”

To be blunt, that would be a big change from last year.

And if it happens, CU football could become a lot more fun.

“The last time I checked, the forward pass was fun,” Patterson said. “We need to get back to that and I’m excited for the challenge to build this thing with (wide receivers) Coach (Phil) McGeoghan and Coach Sanford.”

Cross your fingers.