Steven Montez’s mistakes cost the Buffs in the end

BOULDER – We still haven’t seen the Steven Montez we saw back in 2016 during his breakout performance against the Oregon Ducks; we still haven’t seen the best of Montez as the starter in 2017.

Saturday night against the seventh-ranked Washington Huskies, Montez’s play and more importantly, his turnovers ended up costing the Colorado Buffaloes.

“Point blank,” said the young QB, visibly disappointed with his performance. “You can’t throw three picks and expect to win the game.”

In a rainy, ugly day at Folsom Field, the weather played no part in his performance said Montez, who ended the day with three interceptions and a few too many missed opportunities. Maybe most costly of all was a missed deep throw to a wide-open Devin Ross early in the game that could have changed the complexity of the contest, but Montez overthrew his target.

Things seemingly started off perfectly for CU’s offense on an opening touchdown drive that seemed too good to be true. After that, Washington’s powerful defense imposed themselves and everything slowly turned for the worst.

In truth, No. 12 tried to manage the game early-on picking his spots, running it with efficiency and taking what the defense gave him in the passing game by finding open receivers on short routes.

After two drives that ended in punts, Montez seemed to continue his patient approach and doing his best Sefo Liufau impression until a tip on a seemingly easy throw to Phillip Lindsay bounced off the running back’s hands and right into cornerback Jordan Miller’s for his first interception.

The Huskies were able to capitalize with a field goal and on the very next drive, Montez tried a deep throw to Shay Fields which was woefully overthrown and again picked off by Miller.

“At that point, I thought we had some pretty good momentum going with us so I felt like taking a shot,” explained a disappointed Montez post game.”I felt like Shay could go out there, beat him, and hopefully get a nice touchdown. But, I overthrew him. The rest is history. It’s on film”

While the Buffs ultimately managed to limit the damage of the first two turnovers it was the third one that was the backbreaker. On 3rd and 4 with the Buffs already down 24-10, the quarterback was fooled by a pre-snap all-out blitz look only to result in UW rushing three and dropping eight in coverage. As Montez tried to make a quick decision to the flats, he threw it right to Myles Bryant who picked it off and returned it to the end zone for a pick-six that put the Buffs into too deep a hole to climb out of.

“Alright, so I came out,” explained No. 12 “I saw the corner, he was pressed then bailed and we had an under call for a five-yard route, so I’m thinking ‘alright if he bailed we should have it’ so right when I released the ball I saw the nickel buzz right under it, and right when he caught it I tried to catch him and he just outran me. Bad decision.”

His coach saw similar trickery being used by Washington to bait Montez into the pick.

“The one he threw it out to the flats,” said head coach Mike MacIntyre. “I think they dropped eight people in coverage and I don’t think he saw the guy dropping out there, it looked like he was coming, then he dropped back and it looked like Steven didn’t see him.”

In a game in which the offense struggled to run the ball and win at the line of scrimmage, Montez did his best managing the game until he tried to do too much and all went wrong. Eventually, even CU’s defense that tried their best to bend and not break, couldn’t resist much more and gave up a back-breaking 57-yard touchdown run shortly after the pick-six.

Losing to Washington shouldn’t come as a surprise nor an indictment of Montez who at times looked ready to take on a defense of this caliber. The mistakes ended up being too much, and as the Pac-12 schedule takes off in full Colorado needs to find that same Steven Montez that got us so excited at this same time a year ago.

“They were kind of just playing some soft zone stuff,” explained Steven. “Some of the routes were covered. Some of them, they just zone it up. They fit it well. They are a good football team. They are a good defense. We just have to be better. We have to go in, watch the film, and come out ready for UCLA.”

If you saw Montez back in 2016 when he was at his best you were excited, not just for him, but for the future of the Buffs program. Hope is far from lost, but thus far this year it’s impossible for any Buff fan to say this is what they hoped and dreamed of seeing out of the quarterback play this season. If No. 12 is to become a special signal-caller he’ll need to take the next step in his development and in a hurry.

When coach Mac was asked if this could be a learning experience for Montez he didn’t mix words.

“Yeah, I should definitely hope so,” explained the coach. “I definitely hope it can be. It needs to be as he watches the film… and we need to find out ways to help him as we look at it.”

With the Pac-12’s best now out the way, it’s time for CU’s potentially explosive offense to get back on track building off some of the creative and versatile play calls we saw today. But it’ll all start with the quarterback and how Montez can bounce back from his mistakes will make all the difference in how the rest of Colorado’s season will go.