BOULDER — Scholarship players don’t get cut in college football, but true freshmen can be forgotten. Redshirt designations have a tendency to cover up a name for an entire year.
That won’t happen to Justin Torres. One of four true freshman tailbacks, Torres learned after rushing seven times for 35 yards and a touchdown in Thursday’s scrimmage that coach Dan Hawkins will play him.
“He’s a very hard-nosed runner,” Hawkins said. “He’s a very smart player. He understands the playbook. There’s a good chance that one of those two guys (along with Cordary Allen), if not both of them, will play, because they bring a little something extra to the table with their size.”
Again, as with his quarterbacks, Hawkins was being cautious.
“He’s playing,” running backs coach Darian Hagan said of Torres on Friday after fall camp’s first closed practice. “That’s a direct quote.”
Torres is a baby bruiser. He’s 6 feet, 215 pounds, but his acumen lies in an uncanny ability to understand an offense with a simple flip through a playbook.
“I haven’t been around a player like him,” Hagan said. “He’s a guy who you can give him a picture, give him the verbiage and the guy remembers it. Coach (Gary) Barnett always said I was a guy who could take it from the classroom onto the football field.
“Justin is that kid.”
Torres has always had a high football IQ. Under former Colorado quarterback Mike Moschetti at La Mirada (Calif.) High, Torres played tailback, H-back, wide receiver, tight end and defense in a sophisticated West Coast offense.
His football IQ is high because his IQ is high. He graduated with a 3.4 grade-point average. It helps to have what he says is a photographic memory.
“If I visually see something, I have a good memory that way,” Torres said. “That’s how I study too. If I see it, and you take it away, I’ll draw it up. Even with vocab tests.”
His versatility is one reason his rushing stats were a relatively modest 900 yards and 15 touchdowns. Colorado was his only scholarship offer.
Yet he showed what he could do if needed. In the southern sectional semifinals against highly ranked Laguna Hills (Calif.), Torres rushed for 210 yards.
Now he’s not only concentrating on tailback, he’s concentrating on football. Every spring he blew off weight training to play baseball.
“He’s got to work on his work ethic in the weight room,” Moschetti said. “Now not playing baseball and being on a year-round program at Colorado, the sky’s the limit. He’ll be an animal.”
Moschetti compares Torres with Stanford’s Toby Gerhart from last year and Colorado State’s Kevin McDougal from 1999. Torres compares Colorado with La Mirada, which went 4-7 in his sophomore and junior years — Moschetti’s first two seasons — and then 13-1 and the sectional title last year.
“The way these guys have been in the dumps . . . our high school team was the same way, and my senior year we turned things around,” Torres said. “I feel connected. I’m in the same situation again.”
Second and short.
Dustin Ebner, the sophomore backup receiver from Pomona High, cracked his tibia in Thursday’s scrimmage and is out six weeks, Hawkins said.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
