CU Buffs Watanabe goes from sitting to starting

Coming off of a grayshirt shirt year he used to rehab a “LisFranc” foot sprain, 5-foot-11, 240 pound linebacker Grant Watanabe wasn’t even sure he’d play this year.

“I kind of did and I kind of didn’t [expect to play this season], I was kind of on the borderline of ready or not,” he explained. “But when my name was called I knew that I would be ready to go.”

All signs pointed towards Watanabe redshirting when he didn’t see any action in the first six games of the year, but things don’t always go to plan. The Buffs lost starting linebackers Addison Gillam and Kenneth Olugbode, and then Olugbode’s replacement, Ryan Severson, went down too, all of the sudden Watanabe was starting this past weekend against Arizona.

“It was definitely good, I’ve been so eager to go in since I’ve been out for so long,” he explained. “It was definitely nice to get some action in.”

The true freshman was solid in his first action, tying for the team lead in tackles with nine (eight solo) including one sack. Watanabe also made some mistakes that led to big plays for the Wildcats, but that is to be expected from a player in his first game. That said, Watanabe expects better.

“I’m really hard on myself so I’m not going to give myself too much credit,” he admitted. “I understand that it was my first game but there are still a lot of little things I need to work on. Overall, first game I thought it was okay, I knew it was going to be tough.”

Watanabe and the rest of the Buffs defense had a their most trouble of the game when Arizona switched up their look and went with run-first quarterback Jerrard Randall, and, well, it doesn’t get any easier on that front this week against Oregon State. Freshman quarterback Seth Collins leads the Beavers in rushing with 486 yards on 90 carries this season, conversely Collins only has 77 completions, just over half of Sefo Liufau’s 144.

While struggling to defend him may have cost them the game, the Buffs are now looking at facing Randall as an advantage.

“It should be the same this week, [Collins] is more of a run threat, he’s really good at running the ball,” told the young backer. “It really does help a lot that we played [Randall] this weekend because now we know what we need to fix and what we need to work on to stop Oregon State.”

“[The film will] show them exactly what they need to do because you know Oregon State will take a couple things, similar formations and do the exact same thing,” added head coach Mike MacIntyre. “We have to be ready for that…their quarterback is an excellent runner.”

Watanabe expects the Buffs to defend it better the second time around, and expects himself to play better the second time around.

“Now I have all the first game jitters out, that game is definitely going to help my confidence going into this second game, help me ease up a little bit,” he said.

Colorado heads into what may be their most winnable game remaining on the schedule as two and a half point underdogs, Watanabe and the rest of the Buffs will need to step up if they are going to end their 14-game Pac-12 losing streak in Corvallis (7:30 PM, Pac-12 Networks).