It wasn’t too difficult for Colorado’s offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur to build a good relationship with quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Actually, it was quite easy, he said.
“Just being human, right?” he said Monday after the Buffaloes finished practice. “I mean, it’s just normal communication. I think we all understand that, just positive, normal communication. I’m definitely someone that I have complete respect and trust in, and that’s how we talk and communicate.”
It also helps that the two speak a similar football language. Shurmur has spent most of the last 25 years in the NFL. Sanders is just months away from starting his NFL career, as he is projected to be a first-round pick in next spring’s draft.
As Shurmur, Sanders and the rest of the Buffs prepare for Thursday’s opener against North Dakota State at Folsom Field (6 p.m., ESPN), there is confidence in the offensive line’s development.
“We’ve been able to work on all the things we’ve been doing throughout the year that we would do in the first month of the season,” Shurmur said. “We’re playing a different defense (against NDSU) than what we play in training camp, so that was good too because we can work on some of the things that we’ll see as the season goes on, but we feel good about our plan for this first game.”
As with any offense, it starts with the connection between coordinator and quarterback. Throughout the offseason, Shurmur and Sanders have complimented each other.
“A lot of times things come up that I want to talk to him about, and that’s easy because he’s always so prepared,” Shurmur said. “Sometimes it’s harder to work with a player that you can’t get to that level mentally and emotionally, but with Shedeur it’s easier.”
His good relationship with Sanders is one of the reasons why Shurmur calls plays from the sidelines rather than the coach’s box.
“Things are constantly changing when you’re in a no-huddle position,” Shurmur said. “So instead of telling somebody (from the box) to tell somebody I’m right there, I wanted to be down there so I could make those changes in real time.”
“It gives me the opportunity to visit Shedeur in person between series and then we can talk about things we want to do in the future.”
One change this year is that teams can use tablets on the sidelines. Shurmur is used to that from his time in the NFL, but he said he can now look at videos of the previous series rather than just pictures.
“They’re very beneficial when you can see what happened,” he said. “When you run a similar play later, often the plays just change, but you can see in real time how the teams are playing. That’s good stuff.”
Shurmur said he will go into the game with a script for the early part of the game.
“I have my first 15 (plays),” he said. “We have some initial things we want to do because we feel like they’re good plays to move the ball, but then there are also things where within those first 15 you can see how a defense is going to react to a corresponding play you want to call later.”
As a team as a whole, the Buffs are in better shape today than they were a year ago, according to Shurmur. Shurmur was hired as an analyst in the summer of 2023, joining a team that was not only new, but also had a ton of players who had just arrived in Boulder that summer.
“We were able to put a team together this year from the beginning, right at the beginning of the year, and work with them,” he said. “When you look at it, it goes a long way to say it, when you look at it last year, compared to this year, we are a lot more cohesive as a team.”
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