Joel Klatt evaluates Colorado's lack of a run game, issues that creates
Colorado has been incredible to start the college football season, and Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt knows as well as anyone. He broadcasted the team’s first two victories of the season versus TCU and Nebraska.
But he also has seen the flaws that have hampered the Buffaloes over the first few weeks of the year. Most notably, the team’s lack of a run game.
It happened against last Saturday versus Colorado State. As he explained on The Joel Klatt Show, there were two main reasons for Colorado’s inability to run the ball.
“Colorado could not find a way to gain yards on the ground,” Klatt said. “Two-fold here. One was I don’t think they did a great job with their scheme in the run game and number two is their offensive line played awful. Awful. The reason that I know that and can say that — these are facts by the way, this is not bulletin board material. You can’t put this up in front of them and say like, ‘oh, it’s personal’ — it’s not personal. These are facts. You know how I know that? Because for the majority of the time, Colorado State was running a defense where they were running a light run box on defense.
“What does that mean, Joel? Well, it generally means that the middle of the field is going to be open and you’re going to be heavy in coverage. It means that you have enough players on offense to block every single run defender that they have in the box, in the run front, in the run fit, however you want to say it. You have, as an offense, the run ratios. Now, if you cannot run the football, and you have the run ratios, you have major problems on offense — major problems on offense — and they had no answer.”
It seems crazy that an offense averaging over 40 points a game could struggle so much on one side of the ball, but that is the case with the Buffaloes. The team has only 183 total rushing yards on the season — which includes sacks — compared to 1254 passing yards.
Sheduer Sanders and Colorado’s talented playmakers have made up for it with a dynamic passing attack. But the run game will need to improve for the Buffaloes to reach their goals.
“They couldn’t find a scheme,” Klatt said. They couldn’t find a way to run the ball and get Colorado State out of that defense. So what did that do? It forced Sheduer Sanders to sit there and hold the ball in the pocket for too long because they were dropping in coverage. There’s nowhere to go. The zones are tighter. The lanes are tighter. It becomes really difficult. I don’t care how good you are. Let me put it this way, if a defense can stop the run with a light run box, you got problems in particular as a quarterback.”