Colorado’s win over New Hampshire in GIFS

Colorado’s win over New Hampshire was everything you want a home opener against an FCS team to be: boring, quick, and unremarkable. The Buffs sleepwalked to a 45-14 victory, and the starters were pulled after the first play of the 3rd quarter. As such, I watched the game a few times and came up with 5, yes 5, plays that were noteworthy enough to gif. .

This is a simple play to break down. Nate Landman remains an absolute freak. He only had four tackles in limited action last Saturday, but every single one was amazing. The first play was his first of 3 tackles for loss on the day, and he appears to be moving at a different speed than the rest of the field. Landman moves straight down the field and makes a quick tackle.

The second play shows his strength. Landman is in the backfield before the ball is snapped and pushes the pulling lineman back a few yards. Rick Gamboa does a great job occupying the blocker, but Landman makes the play before Gamboa can even plug the hole. He is just so good.

This is a negative play to highlight, but I had to do it nonetheless. This entire play is moot because UNH jumped offsides, but it doesn’t erase the bad play from Josh Kaiser and Steven Montez. Kaiser gets beat pretty easily by a basic bull rush. Kaiser was there and in position, but it seems like he was moving his feet a bit too slow. Montez, for his part, walks into a potential sack. Instead of stepping up into a relatively open pocket, Montez keeps his deep position and then does a naked rollout. It was a reversion to the 2017 Steven.

Travon McMillian had a couple really nice runs on the day (the 75 yard touchdown comes to mind), but this is his best for my money. Travon takes a nice block from the pulling Tim Lynott, disregards the CB trying to leg tackle him, and gets up to speed quickly while refusing to go down. He made an extra twenty yards on this play all by himself. This was by far CU’s best rushing effort on the year.

We end with another promising play from Davion Taylor. You just cannot give him a free rush to the quarterback. Taylor uses his blazing speed to crunch the quarterback, affect the throw, and partially cause an incompletion. As he gets more and more comfortable in his role, those hits will turn into sacks. He is a weapon on defense.

On the whole, I was also impressed with Jon Van Diest, Terrance Lang, and the little we saw of Hasaan Hypolite on defense. Those young guns are at a next level athletically and they play physical. On offense, the speed of Alex Fontenot was fun to watch, and you can tell he’s going to be really good once he reads the interior holes. Beau Bisharat showed some nice burst off the line, even with a lack of straight-line speed. And Tony Brown continues to force his way to playing time. The wide receivers are stupid stacked.