The frustration is brewing in Boulder as the Colorado Buffaloes have limped to a 1-4 record heading into their bye week. Head coach Karl Dorrell admitted his patience is dwindling with a young team that has struggled.
He hasn’t lost hope, however, with a bye week bringing a plethora of opportunities. Along with “evaluating” everything, Dorrell’s bye week agenda has been to fix what can be controlled.
“There’s still a lot of games left, there’s still a lot to play for,” Dorrell said. “We play this game to compete and to win. Obviously, we’ve been on the shorter side of winning, but there’s things in front of us that we can control, (or) at least that we can try to address to play better and to get ourselves in a position to win.”
I chatted with running back Deion Smith and linebacker Jack Lamb on Tuesday to get their approach on the bye week. Both said that while Arizona is in the back of their minds, fixing the team’s internal problems is taking priority during the bye.
“Just improving on the small things, fundamentals and techniques is what we got to focus on in these times,” said Lamb, who came to CU after graduating from Notre Dame over the summer.
A bright spot of the USC game, Smith said his second touchdown of the year was still overshadowed by the eventual loss. Looking back at CU’s current four game losing streak, Smith and Lamb would agree that easily avoided mistakes have often made the difference.
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“We’re just focusing on mechanics, breaking it down from square one and trying to just focus on the small things, the little things,” Smith said. “A lot of the times when it comes to these games the last four weeks it’s always been down to the small, little things. If we break down each play… it’s these small things. This week is a great week for us to get back to the small thing and pay more attention to the details.”
After their bye week, Colorado will have just seven more games to get back on track. A beatable Arizona team will come first on Oct. 16.