2024 COLORADO UPGRADE/DOWNGRADE

The week i’ve been waiting for for nearly a year is finally here. Buffs fans and Husker fans have had this circled from the time the clock hit zero last year. “We have scoreboard on you” followed by “ya but you went 4-8 and we went 5-7” comments flew back and forth. It’s time.

When Nebraska was looking for a new coach after the Frost era, there were many people saying how we needed to sign Coach Prime. We then watched as national media drooled over him and the transfer portal additions, they started out beating TCU, then us, and we heard “SEE!”. But I maintain where I was with that all along, building a program is more than getting 1-2 year answers in the portal, you have to create a foundation with recruiting classes.

Rhule and Sanders are going about this two completely different ways. Colorado has put over 100 new players on their roster over the last two years. Many of the guys that were brought in as upgrades are now on different teams, and the upgrades year 2 are supposed to be better. I just don’t buy it in many areas. Let’s look into upgrades and downgrades for the Buffs since we played them last year.

QUARTERBACK – UPGRADE
Let’s be real, as long as you kept Sanders it didn’t matter. He is one of the best QBs in the country and he leads a high powered offense. They did get rid of some backup QBs and brought in some P5 experience, but this position group goes as he goes, and it’s really tough to slow him down.

RUNNINGBACK – DOWNGRADE
Literally all of the scholarship RBs from 2023 are gone, their best guy headed to Kansas State (Dylan Edwards) who had half the yards and touchdowns for them. They brought in a backup from Ohio State who had 9 rushes for 20 yards against NDSU, their QB was their second leading rusher with 17 yards and that’s because he had an 11 yard scramble, and a former walk-on in Offerdahl had 5 carries. They are a long ways away from what they were at this position.

WIDE RECEIVER – UPGRADE
This one is scary, because they were already good last year. Horn Jr along with Hunter are back, they brought in a very good player in Sheppard from Vanderbilt who made some All-SEC teams. They also brought in Lajohntay Wester, who was first team All-AAC with 102 receptions a year ago and was special teams player of the year. As if Sanders needed any help outside at WR, he got it. This one is a massive upgrade from an already loaded room.

TIGHTEND – DOWNGRADE
This one is actually somewhat comical. Arguably their biggest portal loss was their TE who followed Sean Lewis to San Diego State. So to replace him they bring in a very good TE from Cincy who actually transferred back out of Boulder before he even had his bags unpacked. They lose their third best TE in Fauria, who transferred out to Delaware. They almost literally can’t play TEs and when they do it is a massive dropoff from playing 4 WRs. This is good news bad news. Good news is they struggle to get more players in the box to help them run. Bad news is they are massively spread out with a ton of weapons on the outside.

OFFENSIVE LINE – UPGRADE (I GUESS)
Listen… their offensive line is still bad like last year. But you are upgrading because they can’t be worse than they were last year. Colorado brought in five star OT Seaton from IMG Academy, and while he will be good, he isn’t right now. The interior of their line got dominated by NDSU, and they have one guy that was listed on their two deep for the first game in 3 different spots. They don’t have depth and their talent is lacking. One of the backups is listed at 250 pounds. But again, we are playing them Game 2, not in November. So we will see how much this matters.

DEFENSIVE LINE – UPGRADED
This was a pretty poor position group last year, and Coach Prime hit the portal to get better up front. But they raided the Pitt Panthers grabbing their 2 starting DEs, they also bring in an All-Pac12 player from Arizona State. This will be a much better unit in 2024, and certainly better than the one we faced of UTEP this past week.

LINEBACKERS – UPGRADE
Colorado didn’t lose anything too significant in the portal. Colorado actually went with some guys at lower levels than P5 to fill their spots that have some experience playing rather than their typical “high rating out of high school but didn’t play much at former P5 school” philosophy they had the previous year. It has worked well, I think their LBs are improved and they have some players. However, they also have some weaknesses that we will go over tomorrow in our X’s and O’s for the game.

SECONDARY – DOWNGRADE
This is a downgrade, but Sanders on the backend and Hunter covering WRs they still have plenty to work with. Colorado nabbed the #1 CB recruit in the country with McClain so he could come learn from Coach Prime, but he left after one year, as did a couple other of their prized high school recruits. They replaced them with lower level starters, so the talent downgraded a bit, but the experience went up slightly. Nebraska has to win the one on one balls against this unit if we hope to have the same success week 1. It will be a tougher test with the two mentioned earlier, but won’t be as tough as it was last year.

Tomorrow we will go over the things that worry me for the game, and our keys to victory.