Five Things I Think We Learned About CU After Northwestern

Well that wasn’t fun.

Deion Sanders called it a “flat-out butt kicking.” He’s right. It was embarrassing and ruined a lot of Saturday nights in Colorado.

But I’ve always believed that while things are never as good as they seem, they are never quite as bad as they seem. While CU got kicked in the ass 41-7, there’s still a couple of glimmers of hope that CU can go bowling this season.

Colorado either led or stayed close to Northwestern in total yards for most of the night, and finished with 348 to Northwestern’s 423. CU ran for 180 yards at 5.5 a carry against a Big Ten defense, on the road, in the rain. Northwestern punted on three of its first four possessions.

Then the Buffs started making mistakes and handed the game over.

Of Colorado’s 12 possessions, four ended in turnovers and three ended with a failed fourth down. Seven of 12 drives ended with CU giving the ball to Northwestern where it stood. Seventeen of Northwestern’s 41 points came directly off turnovers. Add nine penalties for 80 yards and you have the whole story.

“Four turnovers, and 80 yards worth of penalties. You’re not going to win.” — Deion Sanders

The weather matters here and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. The forecast called for rain and thunderstorms in Evanston, a flood watch was posted for the morning, and it was a wet, slick-ball night. Northwestern’s own beat writers said the weather in Chicago was “some of the worst they’ve seen in September.”

But rain fell on both teams, and Northwestern committed one turnover to Colorado’s four.

So this is not a “burn it down” post. It’s also not a “nothing to see here” post.

It’s the BuffsBlog 6 [Edit: errrr, 5] things I learned piece from the Northwestern game.

1. Chip Kelly wheel-routed Colorado to death, and CU knew it was coming

Start with the stat that should be hanging in the defensive meeting room this week. Northwestern running back Joseph Himon II caught three passes. All three were touchdowns. He became the first Big Ten running back with 100-plus all-purpose yards and 3 catches for three touchdowns in a game since 1995.

Deion Sanders recognized the issue with coverage out of the backfield:

“How many times did they wheel route us? We’re calling it on the headset. We have to do a better job preparing.” — Deion Sanders

What Sanders is saying is that CU’s staff was identifying the concept from the sideline, calling it out over the headset, and it kept working anyway. That is not a scouting failure.

Some context on who was calling those plays. Northwestern’s offensive coordinator is Chip Kelly, and the Wildcats’ own coverage of this offense describes it the way you’d expect: constant motion, tempo, and route distributions designed to get a defense’s eyes in the wrong place. A wheel route out of the backfield is one of the oldest answers in football to a defense that plays with its eyes in the backfield. Kelly ran it, CU saw it, and CU couldn’t stop it three separate times.

The coverage numbers from the game are brutal in a very specific way:

Colorado DB	Snaps	Targets	Catches allowed	Yards	YAC	TD	Passer rating allowed
Cree Thomas	71	6	6	109	63	1	158.3
Randon Fontenette	73	4	4	47	27	1	155.2
Boo Carter	71	4	3	29	6	0	94.8
Naeten Mitchell	71	2	1	20	0	0	85.4
Jason Stokes Jr.	48	1	1	25	11	1	158.3

A 158.3 passer rating is the maximum. It is what a quarterback earns when every throw is complete and the ball finds the end zone. Aidan Chiles threw 10 passes at Thomas and Fontenette and completed all 10 for 156 yards and two touchdowns.

That means that every single time that Cree Thomas and Randon Fontenette were targeted and the ball was thrown to “their” WR, the WR made the catch.

Oof.

And here’s the part that ties the coverage to the tackling: 122 of Northwestern’s 241 passing yards came after the catch. CU missed 12 tackles. Chiles went 17 of 22 for 11.0 yards per attempt, the worst mark CU has allowed this season, but he wasn’t carving up the deep third. Colorado’s defense was giving up the catch and then failing to make the tackle.

Deion Sanders says the tackling isn’t a real concern. He’s wrong.

2. The pass rush got home 14 times and it did not matter at all

Colorado generated 14 pressures against Northwestern — one sack, one quarterback hit and 12 hurries — on roughly 23 dropbacks. That’s a pressure rate north of 50 percent. Toby Anene graded 90.6 as a pass rusher, the best mark on the team, and added a batted pass.

Chiles went 17 of 22 anyway.

That is what a well-designed quick game does to a pass rush. If the ball is out in under two seconds, pressure is a statistic rather than a result. Colorado’s front has now produced 48 pressures and only seven sacks in three games. The conversion rate is the problem, not the effort.

Which brings up something I wrote after Georgia Tech. Lamont Lester Jr.’s 99.9 from Pro Football Network in Week 1. Three weeks later Lester has a 44.8 pass-rush grade against Northwestern and the Georgia Tech game looks more and more like a bad offensive line than a breakout. Tennessee’s defensive line graded fourth nationally against that same Georgia Tech front a week later. Two different lines, two elite grades, one common denominator.

Despite Lester coming back to earth, one thing is clear. Anene is the real thing. He has graded 92.0 and 85.6 the last two weeks per PFF. He played 40 of 76 snaps on Saturday.

3. Defensive personnel doesn’t make sense

Here is the snap distribution on the defensive interior against Northwestern, sorted by how well they played:

Player	Snaps	Overall grade	Run defense grade
Samu Taumanupepe	22	85.4	86.7
Quency Wiggins	16	81.2	81.8
Dylan Manuel	56	63.3	68.4
Santana Hopper	58	59.3	66.8

Samu (I hate typing Taumanupepe) and Wiggins were the two best defensive players on the field for Colorado outside of Anene. They played 38 snaps between them. Hopper and Manuel played 114.

Wiggins is the one that jumps off the page. Sixteen snaps, four tackles, a tackle for loss and a hurry. Hopper, on 58 snaps, graded 27.7 as a pass rusher and missed two tackles.

I don’t know the reason, and I’m not going to invent one. It could be conditioning, it could be a package thing, it could be that the staff trusts the veterans in certain fronts. But Northwestern ran the ball 51 times and held the ball for 36:53, and Colorado’s two best run defenders watched most of it. Colorado has allowed 62 points and 795 total yards in the last two weeks. It’s worth giving more snaps to Samu and Quency Wiggins to see if they can do better.

The same question applies to Jah Jah Boyd. Eight days after grading 92.6 and making PFF’s national Team of the Week, he played only 14 snaps. No injury was announced and he was on the field, so I think this is a coaching decision versus an injury situation. Meanwhile the safeties in front of him graded 38.0 and 40.8 in coverage.

This doesn’t make sense, and I put this one on the coaching staff.

4. Colorado’s base personnel includes two tight ends who don’t block and don’t catch

There’s a big Xs and Os problem on offense.

Charlie Williams played 64 of 67 offensive snaps. Fisher Clements played 38. That’s 102 tight end snaps on 67 plays — Colorado’s base personnel grouping Saturday was two tight ends. Here’s what those 102 snaps produced:

Tight end	Snaps	Targets	Catches	Yards	Run-block grade	Overall
Charlie Williams	64	1	1	3	44.7	42.5
Fisher Clements	38	0	0	0	47.7	42.4

One catch. Three yards. And the two worst run-blocking grades among Colorado’s regulars, on a night when the Buffs were trying to run the football to survive the weather.

Meanwhile Kam Perry — the receiver coaches spent all spring telling us was the most explosive player in that room — played six snaps. Quanell Farrakhan Jr. played 27 and was targeted once. Danny Scudero was out with the foot injury, which might explains part of the high number of 2 TE sets, but it doesn’t explain using TEs that don’t block and that aren’t receiving threats.

The downstream effect shows up in the target distribution: DeAndre Moore Jr. and Joseph Williams saw 10 targets each and no other Buff was targeted more than once. Two reads and no third option, against a defense that could sit on both. CU’s TEs don’t punish the defense for focusing coverage on the 2 outside WRs. If they can’t make defenses play honest, then CU needs to play with another WR instead of a tight end.

The Go-Go offense is supposed to stress defenses horizontally and vertically with tempo and space. Through two games against FBS opponents, it has scored 21 points combined. It isn’t helping that CU isn’t putting its best players on the field.

5. Juju’s Weber State game was the outlier, and that’s the honest read

Lewis finished 19 of 29 for 168 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions, the first two of his college career. He was CU’s lowest-graded offensive player at 33.4, with a 29.9 passing grade. ESPN’s QBR had him at 38.8.

Here’s the three-game line, and it tells you what we actually have right now:

	Georgia Tech	Weber State	Northwestern
Yards per attempt	4.59	15.9	5.8
ESPN QBR	32.6	85.2	38.8
PFF passing grade	59.4	82	29.9

Right now, Lewis played 2 below average games against legitimate competition and one very good game against an awful team.

After Weber State I wrote that 348 of his 366 yards came off play action and that Lewis’ test would be whether he could win a game on straight dropbacks. Saturday was that test, in the rain, with the run game producing and the score still getting away. He completed 65.5 percent of his throws for only 5.8 yards per atempt and the offense only scored seven points.

I’m quickly realizing that yards per attempt are a crucial stat for Julian Lewis and CU’s offense. Averaging only 4 or 5 yards per attempt is a ypa that ranks in the bottom 10% of the country. If this number doesn’t improve, CU may need to make a change at QB. I’m not advocating for that right now, but it is imporatnt that fans pay attention to yards per attempt over the next several games because it’s going to tell us a lot about Lewis’ willingness to throw the ball downfield.

Now the other side. Lewis just turned 19 years old and has the physical skills to push the ball down the field. Importantly, he also seems to understand that he needs to play better.

“It all starts with the quarterback, right? It starts with me. I have to do better, just getting the ball to the open guys.” — Julian Lewis

We still don’t know what Julian Lewis is, and we’re going to find out over the next three weeks against Baylor, Texas Tech and Utah, because those defenses are all better than Northwestern’s defense. Pay attention to yards per attempt.

So where does that leave us?

Colorado is 2-1 with a road win at Georgia Tech, a blowout of an FCS team and a bad night in Evanston. The Big 12 title race starts this weekend.

The liabilities are on the film now. But remember, things aren’t as bad as they seem after Northwestern.

The strengths are on the film, and they’re real. Colorado has allowed 1.7, 4.4 and 3.6 yards a carry. The interior defensive line is legitimately good when it plays. Anene is a problem for offensive tackles. The Buffs ran for 180 yards in a monsoon against a Big Ten defense.

Big 12 play starts Saturday. I have no idea which Buffs team will show up for the game at Baylor at 10 a.m. Mountain on ESPN2.

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How to Watch CU Athletics This Week, Sponsored by SportsDeck

Football: Colorado at Baylor

Saturday, 10 a.m. Mountain on ESPN2

It’s an early 10 a.m. Mountain start on ESPN2. The radio call is on KOA 850 AM and 94.1 FM.

Soccer: West Virginia at Colorado, then Colorado at Texas Tech

Thursday, 7 p.m. MT at Prentup Field — ESPN+
Sunday, noon MT at Texas Tech — ESPNU

Two very different watches. Thursday’s home match against West Virginia is on ESPN+, the streaming service, which is not the same thing as the ESPN channel. Sunday’s trip to Lubbock is on ESPNU, which is a cable channel — and one that a lot of skinny streaming bundles leave out. Sling doesn’t carry ESPNU at all. YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Fubo and DirecTV Stream do.

The game against West Virginia in particular is a critical Big 12 matchup. West Virginia is 5-0-2 on the season.

Volleyball: Utah and Arizona in Boulder

Friday, 7 p.m. MT — ESPN+
Sunday, 1 p.m. MT — ESPN+

No. 17 Colorado hosts two Big 12 opponents at the CU Events Center, and both matches are on ESPN+.

Also this week

• Women’s golf: at Wolcott, Colo., Monday through Wednesday
• Men’s golf: at Albuquerque, N.M., Friday and Saturday
• Tennis: at the Air Force Academy, Friday through Sunday

None are televised. Live stats are on CUBuffs.com.

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This section is sponsored by SportsDeck, an app I built after getting tired of finding out my team had played yesterday, on a channel I already had.

Here’s how it works:

You tell it which teams you follow (there are 3,220 teams on SportsDeck across 47 sports leagues) and which streaming and TV services you already pay for. SportsDeck tells you every game your teams play, what time it starts, what channel or app it’s on, and whether you can actually watch it with what you’ve got. It can even show you whether there’s a cheaper way to watch more of your teams’ games.

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OTITWI (Other Things I Thought Were Interesting)

–If you read one thing this week, read this article by Ezra Klein on AI. It’s one of the best pieces I’ve read on AI. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/opinion/ai-ban-self-improvement-recursive-models.html

–Relatedly, the WSJ had an interesting piece on what it’s actually like to work in an AI data center. https://www.wsj.com/business/what-its-like-to-work-in-one-of-americas-data-centers-b4358003?st=HodU1b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

–Read whatever Wright Thompson writes. And definitely read it if he writes about Ole Miss, LSU and Lane Kiffin. https://www.tsn.ca/ncaa/football/article/lsu-ole-miss-lane-kiffin-and-an-old-fight-made-new-n1-49950897/

–If you’re a music fan, check out Cory Wong. The Vulfpeck band leader is arguably the greatest guitar player alive and his live shows are fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umdmotO5lME. Relatedly, I took my wife and parents to see the band Lawrence play with the Colorado Symphony this past Friday night. Lawrence was fantastic and vaulted towards the top of my favorite live bands. Here’s a bit from Lawrence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuzQwix30To. Stick around until the last half of the video, where Lawrence takes us all to church.

–BuffsBlog is posting a great piece later this week by a special contributor. It’s a great look at the Protect College Sports Act, and what all its associates pieces mean for CU athletics. Be sure to check it out when it publishes.

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More BuffsBlog You Might Have Missed

• Five Things I Think We Learned About CU After Weber State: Juju’s 15.9 yards an attempt, the defensive line’s slide from No. 1 in the country, and the special teams problem nobody is asking about.
• Why Alabama’s Nightmare Just Became One of Colorado’s Biggest Portal Steals: the scouting report on Randon Fontenette, including how SEC coordinators schemed away from him.
• CU Football 2027 Recruiting Class: The Front Seven: the defensive line, edge and linebacker commits in Colorado’s 2027 class.