Boulder – Call it “Hawk ball.”
Quarterback in motion. Direct snaps to a variety of running backs. Quarterback lined up as a wide receiver. Lateral back to the quarterback for a flea-flicker.
Colorado coach Dan Hawkins tried so many gadget plays in the 31-28 overtime victory over Colorado State, it’s a wonder he has any tricks left for the second game of the season Saturday night at Arizona State.
Memo to Sun Devils coaches: He does.
“Part of the joy of the game is to put on film of the other team and try to be creative,” Hawkins said.
Like some mad scientist, Hawkins must be already wringing his hands in anticipation of his next chalkboard experiment.
Hawkins won’t give away any secrets but admits that pages of his old Boise State playbook haven’t been used by the Buffaloes. That will come. Last fall, he couldn’t force-feed too much to players adjusting to the new staff and a different system. And he lacked a quarterback who could make all the throws and strike fear in the opponent’s defense.
But with Hawkins’ elder son, Cody Hawkins, now taking the snaps, watch out.
“That’s just kind of his whole deal,” offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich said of Dan Hawkins’ taste for tinkering.
You’ll hear other head coaches say they concentrate mostly on what they do and concern themselves less with what the opponent does. Those conventional thinkers need not ask Dan Hawkins to join their fraternity.
“Dan talks about ‘pressure over defense’ and taking some shots,” Helfrich said. “We’re always going to be a (taking) shots kind of offense. They’re not necessarily all ‘trick’ plays, but big momentum-gaining type plays.
“You’re trying to exploit something vertically as much as you can. We’ve been that way forever as a philosophy.”
Dan Hawkins said the genesis for his gimmickry dates to the mid-1980s when he was an assistant at Cal-Davis, his alma mater. Cal-Davis typically lacked the talent to overwhelm its opponents, so the coaching staff won with X’s and O’s.
“There’s no question you have to have players,” Hawkins said. “But the other side is, the opponent has players. They have coaches. They have scholarships. They watch film, too.
“So you’d better do some things that can’t really be coached against, or at least they haven’t prepared for.”
Such as quarterback Cody Hawkins setting up as a wide receiver against Colorado State.
“You guys saw me split out there – it was not pretty,” Cody joked to reporters after the game.
Make no mistake, Cody loves it. As a youngster, Cody would sit in the stands above Boise State’s blue turf and watch Dad create some magic.
“That’s kind of what makes the sport fun,” Cody said. “Yeah, you’re going to need some hard-nosed plays and play hardball. But it’s always fun when you can get those trick plays in there and give the other team something they haven’t seen and experiment a little bit.”
If Colorado’s crazy offense didn’t keep CSU defenders on their heels, at least it must have got them thinking. CU scored 31 points without arguably the Buffs’ three most explosive offensive threats. Freshman wideout Josh Smith is healing a bruised kidney. Senior Bernard Jackson, last year’s starting quarterback who was converted to a run-catch “slash” role, didn’t have academic clearance to suit up. And senior tailback Hugh Charles, who has sprinter’s speed, pulled up with a strained hamstring during the game’s first series. He did not return.
Even so, Colorado players did not panic when falling behind by 11 points in the third quarter.
“We were still fired up,” Cody Hawkins said. “We knew we had a lot of good plays. We knew when we got the ball things were going to pop.”
Dan Hawkins should not get all the credit for CU’s bag of tricks, Cody said.
“Coach (Eric) Kiesau came from Cal, where they run a lot of great stuff,” Cody said. “Coach Helfrich came from Arizona State, Coach (Jeff) Grimes came from BYU. Everybody on the staff collaborated on this offense. It’s not just my father. It’s kind of a hybrid.”
The basic strategy is to catch a defense in a certain formation that puts the opponent at a disadvantage and susceptible to a surprise play, Helfrich said.
“Defenses usually line up a certain way against things,” Helfrich said. “If we can line them up in something, hopefully we can exploit that.”
When a big play works, the benefits go beyond moving the chains, Dan Hawkins said. It’s like a basketball team getting a lift from watching a teammate dunk the ball with a thunder jam.
“All those big plays help you in the grand scheme of things,” Dan Hawkins said. “They help you emotionally, psychologically, personally.”
Staff writer Tom Kensler can be reached at 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com.
