Analyst: Now-struggling Week 1 Colorado star needs most touches
Week 1 Colorado football star Dylan Edwards — who put up 159 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns against TCU in Week 1 but hasn’t reached the 100-yard benchmark a single time since — needs more touches within CU’s offense than anyone else according to Buffaloes Wire’s Stacey Blackwood.
“In my opinion, Dylan Edwards should receive more touches than anyone else in Colorado’s offense,” Blackwood prefaced before saying, “Edwards can make plays as a runner and a receiver, so the Buffs coaching staff needs to make an effort to feature him more often.”
That opening-week explosion set the stage for Edwards to hold the rushing lead for the entire season through Week 10, but Anthony Hankerson has cut that lead down to just 13 yards and figures to pass him in the season’s final weeks should Edwards continue to be a non-factor.
Colorado football offense lost the plot when it couldn’t integrate the run
Perhaps one of the understated reasons Sean Lewis was demoted from the lead play-caller role to co-offensive coordinator alongside Pat Shurmur was because the run game was downright non-existent for the first eight games of the 2023 campaign.
To be fair to Lewis, Shurmur did no better; overseeing an offense that accumulated a total of 31 yards in his debut. But the point still stands that the run game not being integrated into an offense that is relying far too much on Shedeur Sanders under center is the kind of offense that warrants a demotion. At least typically. In Lewis’s case, though, the dearth of protection in front of the Buffs backfield is nearly the root of all the problems CU faces.
The problem with Colorado's offense has been the lack of a run game and not committing to it. I find it hard to believe that's Sean Lewis' choice. Lewis ran the ball more than 60% of the time at Kent St. CU runs 42% of the time. This hasn't been a typical Lewis offense #cubuffs
— Brian Howell (@BrianHowell33) November 3, 2023
No matter who is doing the play-calling for Colorado, it won’t make a single difference if the running backs meet resistance at the line of scrimmage, and sometimes behind it, on nearly every carry.