Three takeaways from Colorado's 41-10 loss to Washington State

The Colorado Buffaloes lost to the Washington State Cougars 41-10 in Pullman, Washington Saturday. It was just the most recent in a string of frustrating contests as the Buffs have fallen to 3-4 due to a three-game losing streak.

Here are the key storylines:

Steven Montez didn’t turn things around

After looking strong for the first five games of the season, Steven Montez was pulled before the conclusion of the game for the second-straight week on Saturday.

On his first interception of the day, Montez stared down a receiver running from left to right across the middle of the field. Since his eyes never moved all the way to the right boundary, he didn’t notice the defensive back cheating inside, waiting for Montez to throw the ball.

The pass was undercut and intercepted.

Then, on a third down later that half, Montez lobbed a ball up to Tony Brown in the end zone from 25 yards out. It, too, was intercepted and Colorado didn’t get a chance to try the field goal.

Montez’s day was just ugly, as it was against Oregon the week before, but things didn’t get any better with Montez out.

Tyler Lytle was the first quarterback off the bench for Colorado, but on his first dropback he was sacked and left the game with a shoulder injury. Freshman Blake Stenstrom took over, but on his first snap he threw an interception.

Head coach Mel Tucker said after the game that Montez was his guy going forward.

Prior to throwing six interceptions in the last two weeks, Montez had looked pretty good. He’d completed at least 65 percent of his passes in four out of five contests and 60 percent in the other. He’d thrown 10 touchdowns and only two interceptions.

Now he’s thrown 10 and eight and his completion percentage has dipped to 63.8 percent.

The mistakes piled up

Steven Montez’s turnovers certainly didn’t help the Buffs, but he was far from the only one to struggle on Saturday.

Colorado cut its penalty total in half from the week before, but there were still seven. Many of them, again, were avoidable mistakes like false starts.

Kicker James Stefanou missed a pair of field goals, making Saturday’s contest one of the worst of his career.

There were dropped passes, missed throws, blown coverages and failed assignments.

Colorado just couldn’t nail down the details and that’s how the game slipped from its grasp early on. Even late in the second quarter, it wasn’t hard to see how Colorado could be very much in the game had things broken differently.

Alex Fontenot is on fire

Here’s the silver lining: Sophomore running back Alex Fontenot is for real.

Fontenot topped 100 yards on Saturday and the most impressive aspect of his performance was how easily he seemed to do it. He bounced off defenders, made guys missed and hit his holes at full speed.

It only took 11 carries for Fontenot to put up 105 yards.

Much of the credit has to go to an offensive line that seems to be performing better and better with each passing week.

Colorado hasn’t rushed for fewer yards than the previous week in five consecutive games.

Freshman Jaren Mangham also put up over five yards per carry with 42 yards on eight attempts.