Colorado University Athletics
For CU's Dorrell, Player Development Key For Spring Ball
March 11, 2020 | Football, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — New Colorado coach Karl Dorrell's "to-do" list for spring football is no doubt lengthy.Â
But after being named as CU's 27th head coach less than a month ago — Feb. 23, to be exact — Dorrell has done an excellent job of playing catch-up. He's hired a staff, met with his players as a team as well as on an individual basis, outlined a spring practice schedule, and addressed dozens of other issues that always come with taking a new job.
When CU gets the go-ahead to resume normal activities, Dorrell will get to see the Buffs in action when they hit the field for the first of 15 spring practices.
"I'm excited and I think we're ready," Dorrell said last week. "I've been going at warp speed since I got here, and I finally feel like I've been able to slow down a little."
Of course, "slowing down" is a relative term. Like any new head coach, Dorrell has a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time, and Dorrell's time is shorter than most. While head coaching changes usually happen in December, the Buffs' change came about in late February in the wake of the sudden and unexpected departure of Mel Tucker.
"We're still moving fast," Dorrell said last week. "Now that our staff is in place, we have to prepare to get themselves ready for spring practice."
While Dorrell didn't rush the assistants hiring process, he didn't waste any time. His staff includes four holdovers from the last staff and six newcomers, a blend he believes will provide continuity on both sides of the ball — he kept two coaches on offense and two on defense — while also allowing him to institute his philosophies.
"I wanted to be as selective with the candidates as I could," he said. "Iwanted great teachers, I wanted guys that are great mentors, guys that are interested not just in the football piece. They have to understand that you are shaping and developing young men to become men. That's just as important as the football piece. All of them have that understanding."
Dorrell said there was heavy interest from around the nation from both the college and professional ranks.Â
"We had a lot of people — I mean a lot of people — very interested in working with me, which I was flattered by," Dorrell said. "It was hard because I wanted a certain profile for this place, the things we need, the players we need, what we need for recruiting — all those things came to be factors. I think we ended up with a really good staff."
A big part of spring ball will be implementing offensive and defensive schemes. While Dorrell will stay with the basic 3-4 defensive scheme coached last year by coordinator Tyson Summers, one of the holdovers from the last staff, there will still be some tweaks. Offensively, wide receivers coach Darrin Chiaverini will assume coordinator duties of an attack that Dorrell has promised will be balanced — one he hopes will be reminiscent of the offense he helped coach under Bill McCartney in the early 1990s at CU.
Spring will also give Dorrell and his staff their first real opportunity for player evaluation and the beginning of a depth chart.
His three top priorities for his first spring as Colorado's head coach:
1. Player development. "That's a big part of the foundation," Dorrell said. "I have eight seniors, so we're still a fairly young team. Some of these guys played last year. But to increase our depth and development with our sophomores and juniors, spring is the time is to prove where you are on the depth chart. It's about competition. You're building up your systems, you're building up your depth and you're trying to create a depth chart for the fall."
That development will also include his assistant coaches as they become familiar with personnel and the systems, as well as get comfortable working with each other.
2. Quarterback evaluation. Steven Montez, who started every game for CU the last three seasons, is gone. It's been years since the CU quarterback competition has been this wide open, this inexperienced — and this thin in terms of depth.
The Buffs enter the spring with just two scholarship quarterbacks on the roster, and only one who has been on campus for more than a couple of months.
Junior Tyler Lytle — who has taken only a handful of game snaps in his time in Boulder — still enters the spring as the most experienced quarterback on the team. Competing with Lytle will be true freshman Brendan Lewis, a highly recruited Texas prep product who enrolled this spring.
"A big part of the picture will be trying to figure out the skill sets of the guys we have," Dorrell said. "We're going to have a new quarterback — who is it? Is it the junior or the incoming freshman? We have to figure out the skill set we're going to roll with. That's a process that's going to be taken into fall camp, but we have to get a good idea of what both those guys can do. That's critical for the spring."
While no coach wants to try to play a season with just two scholarship quarterbacks, Dorrell said the situation will actually be beneficial for the spring — if both can stay healthy.
"If we stay off of them, it's a good thing," Dorrell said. "They need every possible rep they can can get."
Dorrell said he's seen situations where there were as many as four quarterbacks — and no incumbent starter.
"In a 12-play period, you have to divide it up so that this guy gets three, this guy gets three, this guy gets three and so on," Dorrell said. "Pretty soon maybe one guy is getting five and another guy four and eventually, somebody gets shorted before you've really had a chance to do a good evaluation."
That certainly won't be the case this spring for the Buffs.
"They're going to get plenty of reps and plenty of exposure," Dorrell said. "You can set it up so one guy goes with the ones this day and the twos the next, and vice versa. It gives you the opportunity to get a really good evaluation."
3. Develop team unity. Dorrell will be the Buffs' third head coach in three years. That's not recipe´ for continuity or consistency, and Dorrell knows he doesn't have a lot of time to bring the Buffs together as they learn yet another coach's preferred way of operating.
"They have a new coach, a new value system, a new way of doing things," Dorrell said. "You have to make sure there's a good foundation of bringing things together in the spring that we can take through the summer."
One thing with which Dorrell said he has been extremely impressed thus far is the players' attitude as he has met with them individually and as a team. A third head coach in three years could understandably produce some hesitancy, but Dorrell said he's seen nothing but enthusiasm and an eagerness to get to work.
"They've been great," Dorrell said. "They want to win. They believe they should have won more last year and this is a year they don't want to take things for granted. Me helping them bridge that thought into winning is this: there's a way you practice when you win, there's a way of how you handle your business, there's a way of taking care of your body. Those things don't happen overnight. There's a process to winning and that's my job, to help them understand what that is. It's not just a couple hours a day — it's a commitment."
Dorrell is already seeing signs of that commitment. As he leaves work each evening, he walks through the Indoor Practice Facility on his way to the parking garage. Almost always, he said, there are players getting in some extra work on their own.
"That's what it takes, doing extra work," he said. "It's all an educational moment. It's how you teach young guys. It's not two hours a day and you're done. There's a bigger process and our job as coaches is to help them understand that's what great teams do."
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
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