Three takeaways from Colorado's 20-10 win over San Diego State

BOULDER – The Colorado Buffaloes are still undefeated.

CU beat San Diego State 20-10 on Saturday at Folsom Field, improving its record to 3-0. The game was in the Buffs’ control from start to finish, though there were some bumps in the road for Colorado.

Jarek Broussard continued his record-breaking pace and Sam Noyer was a net positive, though one glaring mistake could steal the headlines, but it was the Buffs’ defense that led them to victory.

Here’s what we learned on Saturday:

The defense is legit

Nate Landman’s name will be mentioned in Butkus conversations. He posted 11 tackles, including 3 sacks and half of a tackle for loss in the running game, plus a pass breakup. He’s an intimidating presence and he’s made enough splash plays with enough regularity that his name will be tossed around with the rest of the best players in the country at his position.

Whether Landman will be win the award, or even be named a finalist, is tough to predict, but there are factors working against him. The most important is that he’s only scheduled to play six regular-season games this year.

Either way, Landman is the key to everything that Colorado is doing defensively and it’s working.

The Buffs’ defense allowed three points on Saturday. Three. The scoreboard may show a 10 next to San Diego State’s logo but the Aztecs’ lone touchdown was scored on a pick-six from Sam Noyer. The defense only allowed three points.

Colorado forced seven three-and-outs. Over half of SDSU’s offensive plays resulted in zero yards or a loss. The Buffs haven’t allowed so few yards per play in four years, and that was against an FCS opponent.

Carson Wells played well and so did Mustafa Johnson and just about everybody else on the defensive line. The secondary wasn’t put to a tough test, thanks in part to a strong pass rush, but it didn’t allow the big plays that have plagued it for over a year, so it deserves props as well.

I’m not so sure that Boulder isn’t the home of the best defense in the Pac-12, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

The offense isn’t flawless

Through two games, the Buffs’ offense hadn’t faced all that much adversity. Nearly every button that offensive coordinator Darrin Chiaverini pressed was effective. In fact, Colorado could have gone scoreless in its next two games and still have a better points per game average in conference play than it did last year.

The Aztecs provided a reality check.

Before we go any further, it’s important to note that there were any number of factors working against Colorado on Saturday. Obviously, the lack of preparation was detrimental. For most of the week, Colorado was focused on USC. They were scouting the Trojans, and designing an offense that could attack them. Then, on Thursday night, less than 48 hours before the game, the Trojans canceled and CU set its sights on SDSU.

Meanwhile, the Aztecs had been preparing for Colorado since Tuesday.

The Buffs didn’t have time to cook much up for Saturday’s game, and it didn’t have much reason to show what’s still up their sleeve with four more games, assuming they play in a bowl. That’s because Colorado has a talent advantage over SDSU, so playing straight up should have been enough to win, and at the end of the day it was.

Oh, and San Diego State came into the game as the eighth-best scoring defense in the nation.

But whether the Buffs didn’t want to show off their tricks, didn’t have time to come up with any, or just got slowed down by a worth opponent, the final result stands: Colorado didn’t put up the Star Wars numbers we saw in the first two games.

Jarek Broussard was still a stallion of a workhorse, but the Aztecs’ big boys up front beat CU’s as often as they lost, and the running game was less efficient because of it.

Sam Noyer made a bad decision on an out route to the wide side of the field and was punished with a pick-six.

Colorado did enough to win, and you could find as many excuses for its regression as you want, but the Buffs need to be better offensively from the top down going forward.

The team can adapt

As mentioned above, this wasn’t an easy week to be a Buffalo.

(Well, other than the fact that CU was one of 15 undefeated teams in the country.)

The Buffs had to gear up for a conference opponent in a matchup that would likely have sent the winner to the Pac-12 Championship, and the opponent was a team that they had never beaten dating back to 1927. Then, the rug was pulled out from under the Buffaloes, and the team had to adjust and take on a non-conference opponent it hadn’t scouted.

With less than 48 hours’ notice.

And the new opponent had been preparing for Colorado for two days.

And all of that happened on Thanksgiving.

Oh, and that Thanksgiving had to be spent away from their families because of a pandemic.

A pandemic.

So yeah, if the Buffs looked a little flat, maybe we can cut them a little slack.

And they really don’t need all that much slack because they came out and played a pretty sharp game overall, if we’re being honest. I mean, they led from start to finish and won by double-digits. They beat Las Vegas’ expectations by a touchdown.

For some reason, the Colorado Buffaloes didn’t fall victim to the trap game that so easily could have tripped them up.

It probably isn’t coincidence that Karl Dorrell preaches adaptability and flexibility on a daily basis.

Maybe it isn’t coincidence that Karl Dorrell hasn’t missed a postseason as a head coach.