1. Both lines were the best units on the field, and I did not see that coming

Georgia Tech ran the ball 30 times for 51 yards. That is 1.70 yards per carry. For context, Georgia Tech piled up 320 yards rushing against Colorado in last season’s meeting. This time they finished with 51 yards.

Let’s friggin go.

Lamont Lester Jr. was the leader of the defense. Five tackles, four of them solo, 3.5 tackles for loss and three sacks. All three sacks came on third down. Two of them came in the third quarter. Those were drive-ender sacks, too.

Lester was named Walter Camp National Defensive Player of the Week for it, and Pro Football Network graded him at 99.9, the highest-graded edge defender in the country in Week 1. The last time PFN gave a player a 99.9 grade was Aiden Hutchinson in his 3 sack performance against Ohio State in 2021 (!) Pro Football Focus had him at 90.3, which is still excellent and the sort of grade that gets a player drafted. Either way, the transfer from Monmouth recorded the most sacks by a Colorado player in his Buffs debut since 2003.

It was not just him. Pro Football Network graded Colorado’s defensive line at 95.5, the best mark of any defensive line in the country after Week 1, narrowly ahead of LSU at 95.4. Sit with that for a second. This is the same program whose defense was historically bad a year ago. One year can make a big, big difference.

The offensive line deserves its own paragraph. Last week, I wrote that coaches believed that CU could have one of the best offensive lines in the Big 12. Against Georgia Tech, they lived up to that billing. Colorado won time of possession 34:09 to 25:51, on the road, and converted 2 of 3 fourth downs.

BUT….there’s always a but. CU totaled just 307 yards of offense. So the correct read here is not that the offensive line was dominant. Instead, the offensive line was good enough to control tempo and hide a passing game that could not function. More on that in a miute. .

2. The linebackers were exactly who we were told they would be

In last week’s preview I wrote that the coaching staff was thrilled with Gideon Lampron and Tyler Martinez.

They had reason to be excited.

Martinez graded out at 79.1 on PFF, second among all linebackers west of the Mississippi in Week 1. Lampron was not far behind at 74.2. Martinez arrived from New Mexico State, where he put up 94 tackles in 2024 before an injury cut his 2025 short, and where he graded at 66.2. Lampron came from Bowling Green with an 86.4 PFF grade in 2025, the best mark on that roster. So far, so good.

Here is why this matters more than the grades themselves. Holding a team to 1.70 yards per carry is not something a defensive line does alone. A dominant front can win at the line of scrimmage and still bleed four or five yards a pop if the linebackers fill the wrong gap or miss tackles. CU’s linebackers had the best tackling game that I can remember seeing CU’s LBs have during the Deion Sanders Era.

The caveat, and there is always one: this was one game against an offense that wanted to run into the teeth of the defense. The test is whether CU’s front 7 holds against a team that spreads them out and makes them cover. But you cannot ask for a better opening data point than the one they just produced.

3. Julian Lewis was bad

A lot of revisionist history got written in the hours after that final drive, and I understand why. The drive was legitimately excellent: 75 yards, under two minutes, no timeouts, finished with a genuinely beautiful 20-yard touchdown throw to Charlie Williams. If you only watched the last two minutes you saw a quarterback doing something hard and doing it well.

Then there were the other 58 minutes. Lewis finished 14 of 27 for 124 yards. That is 51.9 percent completion on short passes — he averaged only 4.59 yards per attempt. Yards per attempt is the single most predictive stat for an offense’s success rate, and 4.59 is not good. It shows that Lewis had a poor throwing game despite the fact that he didn’t try to push the ball down the field. He was dinking and dunking, and still throwing bad passes.

From an advanced stat standpoint, Lewis’ QBR of 32.6 ranks him 105th nationally (out of 136 QBs). ESPN has him with a -3 PAA (or points against average). This means that Lewis cost CU about 3 points relative to what an “average” QB would have done against Georgia Tech. The bottom line is that CU will not win 6 games this season if Lewis doesn’t play better.

Now, for an anecdote. As many folks now know, I’m a sports bigamist. I follow Michigan as closely as I follow CU. Bryce Underwood, also a sophomore, went 12 of 22 for 170 yards with a touchdown and an interception against Western Michigan. He “led” Michigan to a rather dubious 13-12 win. At least I think Michigan won. Regardless, Underwood was awful. His QBR? 36.7, ranking him higher than Lewis after week 1.

Ouch.

None of this means Lewis is not the answer. He is a true sophomore, his WRs dropped too many passes against Tech, he was on the road in a humid, post-rain environment with a slick football, and the fourth quarter suggests the ceiling is still there. But Colorado’s defense won the game despite its quarterback playing really poorly, and Lewis needs to be better.

4. Brennan Marion called 15 straight runs, and I have never liked a coordinator more

Spanning the end of the third quarter and most of the way through the fourth, Colorado put together a 17-play drive on which 15 of the calls were consecutive runs. It covered 66 yards and burned close to ten minutes of game clock. On the road. In a one-score game. With a freshman quarterback who had been struggling all night.

Understand what that requires from a play caller. Brennan Marion runs the Go-Go offense, a system built on running the ball with tempo and vertical shots, the philosophical opposite of the slow-down offense that he called against Tech. Every one of those 15 handoffs was an admission that his preferred version of the game was not available, and a decision to win the one that was.

Fifteen consecutive runs will lay the foundation for this year’s team. Tough and physical. If that does not make you love Brennan Marion, nothing will.

4.5 And one more: Chauncey Gooden is playing both ways at 380 pounds

Gooden played 65 snaps on offense at left guard and seven more on defense, which made him the only interior offensive lineman in FBS to play both ways in Week 1. He is a 6-foot-3, 380-pound sophomore out of Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, and Deion Sanders has signed off on the idea that he is the next Travis Hunter.

I can’t wait to see him return punts, too.

Oh, he was also named the Outland Trophy’s National Player of the Week.

5. Weber State is not a scrimmage, but it is the get-well game the offense needs

Weber State comes to Folsom at 0-2, most recently on the wrong end of a 47-42 loss to Southern Utah. Giving up 47 points to an in-state FCS rival is a defensive problem, and Colorado’s offense has a chance to get right on Saturday.

The bigger news out of Ogden this week is at quarterback. Fifth-year starter Devin Brown is out with an injury to his throwing hand, and head coach Eric Kjar has named freshman Nate Dahle the starter, with junior Cash McCollum behind him. So Colorado’s defensive line, the highest-graded unit in the country through one week, gets a true freshman making his first career start, on the road, at altitude, in front of a Folsom Field crowd for a home opener.

Do not sleepwalk into this one, though, because the strength of Weber State is precisely where Colorado’s defense will be tested. The Wildcats’ offensive line graded 86.8 against Southern Utah, sixth nationally among FCS lines, with left guard Brody Cutrer at 93.5 (third nationally at the position) and center Jacob Edmonds at 90.4 (seventh). They ran for 5.7 yards per carry last week and have allowed only three sacks in two games. That is a real offensive line.

The injury report thins them out elsewhere. Receiver Tate Kjar is dealing with a high ankle sprain from the opener, cornerback Tajon Evans left the Southern Utah game on crutches, and linebacker Da’Veon Ross is questionable, though fifth-year captain Raimoana Tinirauarii is expected back. Robert Young steps up as a starting receiver after catching four passes for 57 yards last week, with freshman Jasean Mayberry now listed first at another spot.

Colorado should win this comfortably, but the score is not the point. The point is whether Julian Lewis plays better. He needs to complete better than 52 percent of his passes and averages more than 4.6 yards an attempt against a defense that just surrendered 47 points against an FCS team. If the Buffs win 38-7 and Lewis throws for 300+ yards, that’s a good day. If CU wins 20-10 and he throws for 150 yards, we probably have learned something else, and it will be the thing nobody wants to hear.

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OSITWA (Other Stuff I Thought Was Interesting)

–Mr. Miyagi would really, really enjoy the 10th World Bonsai Convention in Malaysia. You will too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYjUa9wDKo&t=77s

–Anthropic researcher quits while warning that AI has a 10% chance of killing everyone this decade. Humans learn ethics from their families, their religious communities, and their teachers and mentors. AI doesn’t really learn ethics, at least not like humans do. We need to figure out a way to teach ethics to AI, and very, very quickly. https://www.newsweek.com/anthropic-researcher-quits-warns-ai-could-kill-everyone-12418798

–A cure for some forms of baldness may be near….https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/arthritis-drug-demonstrates-substantial-hair-regrowth-in-1400-alopecia-patients/

–Culture Preview: What to look forward to this fall. https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/culture-preview-what-were-looking-forward-to-this-fall-ad82a881?mod=hp_lista_pos1

–This is super nerdy, but I love the YouTube channel “Inside Archaelogy,” specifically their monthly “Latest in Archaological Discoveries” series. This is worth your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGUoJy_SRr0&t=485s

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More from BuffsBlog

• How to Watch the Buffs This Week: every Colorado game Sept. 8-14, including why the Weber State opener is on ESPN+ and not the ESPN channel.
• CU Football 2027 Recruiting Class: The Front Seven: the defensive line, edge and linebacker commits, including a flip out of Alabama and a Glenville linebacker Ohio State wanted.