What did Karl Dorrell see when he broke down the 2019 tape?

It’s been a weird, long offseason.

To recap incredibly quickly:

• Mel Tucker
• Steve Sarkisian
• Karl Dorrell
• COVID-19
• Antonio Alfano
• A Buffs-led protest
• etc.

With so many things happening, and none of them involving actual on-the-gridiron football, we haven’t heard much from new head coach Karl Dorrell about what he thinks about his team, football-wise.

Well, that just changed. Monday afternoon, in a conference call with local media, Dorrell explained what he saw when he turned on his team’s 2019 tape and what needs to change.

“There are a lot of good things, particularly towards the end of the season,” Dorrell said. “I felt like the last four games of the year offensively, we were playing smarter. I think our defense really started to find themselves a little bit toward the end of the season where they played pretty well. There has been some good individual play along the way.”

While this is the first time that Dorrell has given his analysis of the Buffs’ 2019 play to the media, he’s already had this conversation with his team.

“What I preached to my team in terms of me evaluating them offensively, defensively and special teams throughout the bulk of the 12 game season: I felt there were some core things that we need to get better at,” Dorrell said.

Dorrell made his name off of his work with some of the best receivers of the past 25 years. Now, in his first stint as a head coach in over a decade, it’d be fair to expect him to zero in on the play along the boundaries.

Dorrell began by digging into the trenches.

“Part of it was fundamentally, both sides of our front, offensively and defensively, we can play a lot better,” Dorrell said. “We didn’t play as well as we could have. They showed signs where it was hard to run the ball against us. They had a few games where they showed that stoutness of playing the system well. But there is a great majority of the season where that didn’t occur. They know they can get better.

“Offensively, we have to create better run efficiency for our running game. We did at times, but we didn’t do it at a consistent level. Those two areas we can continue to get better at. I already told that to the team at the end of April. We’ve had those discussions.”

In his first stint as a head coach — at UCLA from 2005-07 — Dorrell’s West Coast offenses relied heavily on personnel packages that featured multiple running backs and tight ends. Maurice Jones-Drew and Marcedes Lewis flourished, becoming the prototypes for success in a Dorrell system.

Buffs fans may still be concerned following the departure of offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic to Michigan State in February, but Dorrell’s comments make it clear that the standards up front will be high going forward.

“On the perimeter, we played a lot of new secondary players last year,” Dorrell said. “Some of those secondary players transferred over from offense. Again, just trying to jell and play together as a unit. They struggled at times, but it got better towards the end of the year. We can play a lot better football if we can become more fundamentally sound and play with a more aggressive attitude on both sides of the ball and just be certain of our role and understanding the details of how we do things. Those things we anticipate will get better throughout this summer.”