Ducks Wire’s Zachary Neel went scorched earth on Oregon’s Week 4 opponent, and the narrow victory of a Rocky Mountain Showdown that lived up to the “trap game” label dished out to it, Colorado football, after a one-score Week 3 victory over a three-score underdog, Colorado State.
“I don’t care that Colorado got the win,” Neel prefaced before saying, “If it takes you two overtimes to put away a winless Mountain West school (Colorado State) after all of the trash talk and hype that led up to the game, you deserve to fall in the rankings. The Buffaloes are a severely flawed team, and we are going to see a lot of holes poked in their armor next week at Oregon.”
Writing off Colorado State as a “winless Mountain West school” ignores the context that it was a ranked Wazzu that beat the Rams, albeit soundly, in Week 1. Neel is correct that things got a little too Icarus-like, flying too close to the sun with all of the pomp and pageantry of game week; including but not limited to a Lil Wayne concert on campus, an appearance from The Rock, and the presence of every single college football Saturday pregame show. There is one point that absolutely deserves quite a bit of refuting here, though…
Travis Hunter’s absence is the critical hole that’s already been poked in Colorado football
Colorado State DB Henry Blackburn has already poked the necessary hole in the Colorado football program that could unravel the Buffs quite a bit over the next few weeks — injuring Travis Hunter with a dirty hit in the first quarter.
Jay Norvell tested Coach Prime’s resolve, making it personal and bringing his parents into the mix with comments about being raised right. Deion Sanders’ Buffs survived a near-death blow to the season-type scare, but there are going to be challenges in Eugene, Oregon, and with USC in town that CU has not faced yet.
And now they won’t have one of their Heisman candidates, and one of the sport’s most important players, as they face the 2023 season’s biggest tests.