Buffaloes Friday scrimmage recap

The Colorado Buffaloes held their first scrimmage of the spring ball on Friday and, while the recap is a bit late, I wanted to recap some of action.

First recap comes from the official release from the school at CUBuffs.com.

"The quarterbacks did really well, moved in the pocket and did some really good things," MacIntyre said. "They knew they weren't going to be hit, so they had a little more time, but overall they did some good things."

"This was just an abbreviated scrimmage, we made it really hard on the defense by putting the ball on the 50 every drive," he continued. "We will do some more things backed up the rest of the spring. We were really scripted today, we got a lot of red zone work done, so that was an enormous amount of pressure on the defense. The offense did really well, the defense didn't do as well as I would've liked."

While the quarterbacks did well, the running backs really struggled.

Tony Jones paced the running game with 37 yards on six carries, including a 24-yard sprint for a touchdown. Phillip Lindsay and Donta Abron both added short 1-yard runs for scores. The Buffs were minus their top two runners from last fall, Christian Powell who is out following a pre-spring knee scope and Michael Adkins, who suffered a slight ankle sprain on Wednesday.

On the defensive side of the ball the coaches are trying out a number of different combos on the line.

"We may move Tyler Henington outside to defensive end a little more, he's running better and quicker, MacIntyre said of the junior, who is some 20 pounds lighter than his playing weight last fall. "Against some teams we can move him in and out. Against teams with big tight ends, he's 260 but hopefully can give us some good leverage.

Two others shined at defensive end: senior Juda Parker had six solo stops including two tackles for loss and a forced fumble, while redshirt frosh Derek McCartney registered two quarterback sacks, on one on third down.

Buffzone takes a note of another defensive move along the interior of the line.

Norgard is only 6-foot, 240-pounds, but MacIntyre believes he can be effective against spread offenses. Norgard's father, Erik, played center for the Buffs in 1987 and 1988.

"He's really natural in there," MacIntyre said. "He's little for in there, but when he play teams that are going to pound us and power us, he won't be in there much. ... But when it's one-on-one and pass rush and it's quickness and stunting him and moving him, I think he's going to be hard to block. I think he's going to be able to give us some inside pass rush."

Finally, BuffStampede ($) highlights the continued development of Addison Gillam.

"Quicker recognition and creating a few turnovers because, as a Mike linebacker, I think he can cause some more fumbles and I think he can make more interceptions," MacIntyre said. "He made an interception the last game of the season [against Utah] and I expect him to make some of those because he was close to doing that last year and dropped a few and was just barely off on some others.

"As he gets better recognition, he should come out with 10 or 12 tipped passes, three or four interceptions and a couple more caused fumbles. He made a bunch of tackles, now he has to do the turnover side of it to take it to another level."

Here's a link to all of the statistics from the March 14th scrimmage.

The Buffs have practices on Monday, Wednesday and Friday next week. All are in pads from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. at the CU practice fields.