Pitch Invasion: Six Things I Think We Learned After Kansas State

Top photo: Folsom Field after the overtime win over Kansas State. Photo by John Gaddis/BuffsBlog

It was not a pretty week in Boulder.

CU had lost five straight. The last one was a 57-24 beating in Stillwater. The coach’s job security was a national talking point. There was internal fighting within the CU fanbase as oddballs like “Uncle Neely” tried to defend Deion Sanders by attacking CU’s football infrastructure. And on Wednesday, JuJu Lewis was taken to the hospital after a medical emergency.

“It kind of just felt like a dark cloud over this place,” Randon Fontenette said Saturday.

And then, thankfully, Halloween happened.

Colorado beat Kansas State 27-24 in overtime on an 11-yard pop pass from Isaac Wilson to Charlie Williams on third-and-9. The CU fanbase, many dressed in full costume, went nuts and rushed the field after the game.

All was well — at least for one day.

The win snapped a five-game losing streak and a nine-game Big 12 losing streak. CU is 3-5, 1-4 in the conference.

It was also, objectively, a win over a team playing its fourth quarterback in three weeks. It was a fantastic win against a pretty bad team. Yes, both those things can be true at the same time.

We’ve got a lot this week – buckle up, and let’s dive in.

1. Storming the field after beating K-State’s fourth-string QB is ridiculous. Good for the students.

Colorado, a 2-5 team, beat a 4-4 Kansas State team whose starter (Avery Johnson) and backup (Jacob Knuth) were both out. Kansas State’s third quarterback, Dillon Duff, started and went three-and-out on his first three drives. Its fourth quarterback, a local product who had been on crutches for most of the season, came off the bench and nearly beat us.

Still, CU won in overtime. And the students poured onto the field.

By any reasonable standard, it was absurd. Field storming is supposed to be reserved for beating a top-five team, or a rival, or clinching something. Not for beating a .500 team on its fourth-string quarterback to get to 3-5.

BUT (and there’s always a BUT), this is who we are. We have always been this way.

Mitchell Byars at Axios Boulder tried to catalog this back in January. CU fans rushed the field after the 2007 upset of No. 3 Oklahoma, which is legit. They also rushed it after beating a 2-8 Arizona team in 2011. They rushed it THREE times in 2016. And in October 2022, with an 0-5 team and a fired head coach and more than 50,000 diehards in the stands, they rushed it after beating Cal.

So the bar was never high. We cleared it Saturday.

And here’s why I don’t care: the students showed up. For a noon game, on Halloween, for a 2-5 team that had lost five straight and been embarrassed the week before.

This is also something worth remembering when people insist that CU fans only care because of whoever happens to be the head coach. These students showed up for a losing team. They stayed interested. They wanted an excuse to be happy together.

These kids haven’t had many chances to storm anything. If they want to run onto Folsom Field after an overtime win, let them. (CU paid $0 in Big 12 fines for last year’s Iowa State storm because the school followed the conference’s field-storm protocol. Do that again, and nobody gets hurt.)

Isaac Wilson said it best: “A win’s a win, right?”

Right.

2. The local kid from Erie almost ruined Halloween

K-State’s fourth quarterback was Blake Barnett. You may remember him.

Barnett went to Erie High School, about 15 miles down the road from Folsom Field. He went 36-7 as a starter, won a state title as a senior, threw for 7,518 yards and 88 touchdowns, and ran for 3,420 yards and 68 more. His 159 total touchdowns broke the Colorado state record held by some guy named Christian McCaffrey.

Rivals ranked him the top player in Colorado’s 2024 class. Colorado offered him (I heard several fans at the game lament the fact that “CU didn’t even offer Barnett.” That’s untrue. Colorado was his first Power 4 offer). He signed with Kansas State, where Collin Klein, then the offensive coordinator, made him a priority. [Klein is now K-State’s head coach and he grew up in Loveland, Colorado. Kansas State nearly has as many Colorado connections as CU’s team does.]

Entering Saturday, Barnett had thrown five college passes, all in mop-up time of a Week 1 blowout of Nicholls. In 2025, he ran 14 times for 40 yards and threw zero passes. He had been on crutches most of this season and only recently came off the injury report.

Against the Buffs, he went 18-of-28 for 224 yards and the first three touchdown passes of his career. With 55 seconds left in regulation, he drove K-State 62 yards in 53 seconds to tie it.

He is a gritty player, that’s a hell of a first real game for a Colorado kid, 15 miles from home.

But it should worry CU fans that a quarterback with five career pass attempts coming into the game threw three touchdowns against this defense. The coverage grades were uneven. Boo Carter graded 75.4 across 40 coverage snaps per PFF. Makari Vickers graded 71.6 across 30 coverage snaps. Liona Lefau was a 39.3 across 36 snaps.

Safety Naeten Mitchell was targeted three times and allowed three catches for 66 yards and a touchdown. Gage Goldberg played six defensive snaps and allowed two catches for 37 yards and a touchdown. Liona Lefau allowed two catches and a touchdown.

Last week I wrote about this defense being vulnerable to teams that push the ball downfield. This week a backup who started the day on the bench pushed it downfield.

3. CU is wasting two to three lineup spots on tight ends

Yes, tight end Charlie Williams caught the game winning touchdown. He made a great catch on the pop pass, and Isaac Wilson sold the run fake beautifully. Credit to both of them.

It was also the only pass the tight ends caught all day.

Here’s what CU did on offense Saturday. There are typically five skill-position players on the field for every snap (everyone but the quarterback and the five linemen). Colorado ran 67 offensive plays, so there were 335 skill-position snaps to hand out. Per PFF’s snap counts, they went like this:

• Tight ends: 139 snaps
• Wide receivers: 113 snaps
• Running backs: 83 snaps

That’s 2.1 tight ends on the field per play. CU played more tight end snaps than wide receiver snaps. There were more than fifteen snaps with three tight ends.

And this is not a one-game thing. It’s a trend, and it went up Saturday:

Game	TE snaps per play	WR snaps per play
Northwestern	1.64	2.36
Texas Tech	1.30	2.60
Utah	1.33	2.52
Oklahoma State	1.52	2.26
Kansas State	2.07	1.69

The idea, which you could see over and over Saturday, is to stack two or three tight ends to the strong side of the field, and then run against the weak side of the field with (hopefully) fewer defenders.

PFF listed all three tight ends Saturday as right-side tight ends. Here’s where CU ran the ball, per the play-by-play:

Run direction	Carries	Yards	Per carry
Left	8	124	15.5
Middle	25	82	3.3
Right	7	30	4.3

So the weak-side run worked. Three of those eight left runs went for 47, 30 and 22, but even without them, CU ran left five times for 25 yards.

The problem is the other 32 runs. Twenty-five of them went up the middle and averaged 3.3 yards. Fifteen of those 25 middle runs gained two yards or fewer. Overall, 18 of CU’s 40 runs gained two yards or less.

Now the grades. PFF grades on a scale where 60 is average. Here are CU’s tight ends Saturday:

• Charlie Williams: 54.2 (62 snaps), with a 13.3 pass-blocking grade
• Fisher Clements: 53.8 (34 snaps)
• Corbin Laisure: 51.0 (43 snaps)

These three players had three of the four lowest grades on the offense. Laisure was targeted once and PFF charged him with a drop. He was also flagged for illegal touching. Clements wasn’t targeted.

So, again: 139 snaps, two targets, one catch, 11 yards. And bad blocking.

Over the season it’s the same story. Over the five games I have PFF grades for, Williams averages a 48.4 PFF grade on 229 snaps, Clements 52.1 on 176, and Laisure 52.7 on 91. All three of these scores are materially below average. And yet CU keeps playing 2+ tight ends on almost every snap.

As receivers, CU’s tight ends have 11 catches for 125 yards in eight games, out of 165 team catches. They had zero catches against Utah and zero against Oklahoma State.

Now look at who those tight ends are replacing.

DeAndre Moore Jr. graded 78.3 Saturday, the highest grade on the offense. He played 35 snaps. He had played 59, 63, 60 and 55 snaps in the four PFF-graded games before that. Joseph Williams graded 72.2. Ernest Campbell graded 68.0 on 11 snaps.

So CU’s best-graded offensive players played barely half the game, and their snaps went to guys who can’t block or catch at an average level.

If the tight ends are on the field as decoys, fine. But if you’re going to use a decoy, wouldn’t you want one the defense actually has to respect? A third receiver drags a defender out of the box just as well as a third tight end does, and he might catch the ball. When Wilson spread it out on early downs, things opened up (Jack Carlough noticed the same thing at BuffStampede). JaQuail Smith’s 47-yard touchdown came on a run left.

This is not a knock on Charlie Williams or anyone else in that room. They are playing hard. They are being asked to do a job, a lot, that they have not shown they can do at a high level. That’s a coaching decision.

If I can see it, surely the coaches can see it. Right?!?!

4. Richard Young channeled Derrick Henry

The roster lists CU running back Richard Young at 5’11” and 210 pounds. Listen — if Young is 210 pounds, then I am 185 pounds.

Young played 6 snaps against Texas Tech. He didn’t play against Utah or Oklahoma State.

On Saturday he played 41 snaps and ran 24 times for 120 yards and two touchdowns, the first two of his CU career. PFF graded him 75.1, second on the offense behind Moore, and his 77.5 pass-blocking grade was the best of any CU back. He also caught a 32-yard pass that was wiped out because Sean Kinney was flagged for an ineligible man downfield.

Most of Young’s yards came after contact. 72 of his 120 yards came after contact. That’s 60%.

Young wasn’t merely running through holes. He helped make the running game work by being physical and running through defenders. His 77.5 pass blocking grade also supports keeping him involved on passing plays.

The other running backs were up and down. DeKalon Taylor broke a 30-yard run and brutally fumbled it out of the end zone at the K-State 1. JaQuail Smith had a great 47-yard touchdown run and then 16 yards on his other seven carries. Damian Henderson II played five snaps.

Richard Young transferred in from Alabama and was ranked the #1 running back in the State of Florida coming out of high school. He is a highly pedigreed player that hasn’t received many snaps at Colorado. On Saturday, he earned more snaps.

As a result, the run game had its best day of the Deion Sanders era: 222 rushing yards, the most in his tenure.

5. Isaac Wilson is getting better every week

Last week I wrote that CU still didn’t have a quarterback. On Saturday, CU had one.

Here are Wilson’s PFF passing grades in each of his four starts:

Start	PFF passing grade
Texas Tech	60.2
Utah	63.3
Oklahoma State	67.5
Kansas State	72.9

Up every single week.

Wilson went 14-of-21 for 185 yards and the game-winner, at 8.8 yards per attempt, with no interceptions. It was his first start without an interception. PFF charged him with zero turnover-worthy plays. Against Texas Tech he had five. Through his first five games he had 10.

The caveat is that he only dropped back 23 times. Still, the plan was to run the ball, and the plan worked. Wilson didn’t have to win the game. He had to not lose it and then make one throw at the end. He made the throw.

His average depth of target was 12.1 yards, so he was still throwing it downfield. He just stopped throwing it to the other team.

That’s the trend you want from a young quarterback. It doesn’t settle the quarterback question for 2027. But it’s the first time all season the trend has pointed the right way.

6. Gideon Lampron is the best player on this defense, and Makari Vickers earned more snaps

Lampron had 15 tackles, four tackles for loss, two sacks and a hurry. PFF graded his run defense 78.0 and his pass rush 86.8 on ten pass-rush snaps.

This isn’t a one-week thing, either. His PFF run-defense grades in the last four conference games I have: 81.3 against Texas Tech, 86.5 against Utah, 67.8 against Oklahoma State, 78.0 against Kansas State.

Makari Vickers is the bigger surprise. He played three snaps against Northwestern. He made his first start at nickel Saturday, played 61 snaps, forced a fumble on a punt return (K-State recovered), and had the highest PFF grade on the defense at 77.2. In coverage, he allowed only two catches for 13 yards.

And welcome to the defense, Yamil Talib. Yamil Talib came in with 1.5 career sacks and got two on Saturday. CU’s five sacks were a season high, and K-State ran for 3.1 yards a carry.

Where this leaves us

Colorado needs to win three of its last four to get to six wins and a bowl game:

• at Arizona State, Saturday, Nov. 7
• vs. No. 18 Houston, Friday, Nov. 13
• at Cincinnati, Saturday, Nov. 21
• vs. UCF, Saturday, Nov. 28

Last week I wrote that I’d be surprised if CU won two more games. They’ve won one. I’d still be surprised if they got to six.

But that’s a problem for next week. This week, the students got their field storm and the Buffs got a win.

Go Buffs.

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This Week in CU Athletics, Sponsored by SportsDeck

Following the Buffs this week is a project. Men’s basketball opens Monday on ESPN+. Women’s basketball is Wednesday, also on ESPN+. Volleyball and soccer both play Thursday at 7. Then Saturday has three Buffs games in four and a half hours: women’s basketball at 1 on ESPN+, men’s basketball at 1:30 on USA Network in San Diego, and football at 5:30 on ESPN2. Five sports, three different places to watch, and no single screen that tells you what is on and whether you already pay for it.

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The Biggest Story This Week

This is the bigger story this week, even if it has nothing to do with Saturday.

Last Wednesday, Big Ten presidents voted to cap how much school-affiliated, third-party NIL money their programs can arrange for athletes. The number is $27 million a year. Add the roughly $21.6 million schools can now pay athletes directly through revenue sharing, and you get about $49 million a year to pay a roster. Go over that, and the Big Ten penalizes you.

Ross Dellenger at Yahoo reported that at least four Big Ten programs are believed to have spent more than $49 million last year, and maybe 10-15 schools nationally.

The Big Ten just put a number on the top of the market, and the number is $49 million. That’s the ceiling for the biggest programs in the sport.

The effect of all of this is to create essentially three tiers of FBS, plus FCS underneath:

1. The Big Ten and the SEC
2. The Big 12 and the ACC (hi, Colorado)
3. The Group of 6 conference schools
4. FCS

These tiers are not going to play each other on equal terms, in recruiting, in the portal or on the field. And for the first time, there’s a dollar figure on the gap.

If there is a fixed pot of money to build a roster, how you spend it matters more than ever. Deion Sanders makes $10 million this season. That’s nearly half of the $21.6 million CU can pay its entire roster through revenue sharing.

I wrote last week about what it would cost to fire him. Maybe that’s the wrong question. The right question is: what’s the most roster CU can buy with what it has, and is one coach worth nearly half of the money that can go to players?

Other Things That Interest Me, Which Have Nothing To Do With CU Football

–One of my favorite twitter followers is Freddy (@FreddyLA7). He is a German soccer fan that went viral in the US during the 2026 World Cup, where he crossed the country on a road trip. His fast food reviews (particularly his reviews of Waffle House) were legendary. Freddy was in Colorado this past weekend, and he went to the K-State game. His observations from the game were great, including his review of Ralphie’s run and the “pitch invasion” that happened after the game. Here’s his Ralphie tweet:

A buffalo is sprinting across the field😭😭😭

This has to be the craziest college tradition we’ve seen on this entire trip. pic.twitter.com/LtQfwYRtzP

— Freddy🇩🇪 (@FreddyLA7) October 31, 2026

–Will this be the end of the night sky? How satellites might wholly obstruct our view of the cosmos: Could orbital data centers ruin the night sky? (Wall Street Journal)

–An absolutely brutal tweet for football fans by Adam Schefter:

An estimated 75% of former NFL players who died between 2008 and 2023 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the neurodegenerative brain disease tied to high-impact sports such as football, according to a new study.https://t.co/rPYrmM8VRq

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 29, 2026

Chris Nowinski, CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, noted that the CTE rate in the general population is less than 1%, and that 94% of the players in the NFL that have been studied have had CTE.

–What is Travis Hunter up to these days? Making giant bass ponds.

–Someone talk me out of buying this:

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