HONOLULU — Coming into the 2015 season, the general feeling was that if the Colorado football team was to get better, its defense would have to start pulling its weight.
After all, the Buffaloes have a high-powered offense. Or so we thought.
Thursday night, in the Buffs’ 28-20, season-opening loss to Hawaii at Aloha Stadium, their defense was OK. Their offense? Far from it.
“Yeah, I was disappointed,” said CU offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren. “It’s not to point fingers at the players. It’s all of us as an offensive staff and offensive players as a whole.”
The Buffs showed up on defense, forcing two turnovers and limiting the Rainbow Warriors to 302 total yards. That’s the lowest yardage for a CU opponent since Hawaii’s 286 in last year’s game in Boulder.
CU’s offense, meanwhile, finished with 373 total yards Thursday but needed 93 plays to get there, averaging only 4.0 yards per play. The Buffs also committed two costly turnovers.
“Yeah, it’s frustrating,” junior quarterback Sefo Liufau said of the offense’s performance. “We have high expectations of ourselves, and we just didn’t perform to our standard.”
A year ago, CU ranked 19th nationally in passing offense and 37th in total offense. All the primary players from that offense, including Liufau, are back.
Senior running back Christian Powell, who had just two fumbles in 417 career touches coming into the opener, fumbled on his fifth carry Thursday. That came with 72 seconds to play in the first half and ended CU’s chance to take a lead into intermission. Powell, the Buffs’ leading rusher the past three years, didn’t touch the ball again.
Liufau, entering his third year as a starter, never looked comfortable. He completed just 23-of-40 passes for 158 yards and one interception. For the first time in 21 games, he didn’t have a touchdown pass.
Liufau threw a costly interception early in the second quarter when the Buffs were at Hawaii’s 12-yard line and trailing 8-0.
“I was trying to throw the ball away and it just slipped out of my hand,” he said. “That’s frustrating, but it happened. You just have to move on from it.”
Liufau spent the night throwing a lot of short passes. But the one time he took a shot down the field, he badly overthrew wide-open Shay Fields for what could have been a 78-yard touchdown.
CU’s offensive line had a tough night too against the Rainbow Warriors.
The Buffs ran for 215 yards — but 81 came from Liufau, who spent most of the game running for his life. He was sacked four times, and gained about 60 of his yards — including 25 on one play — after dropping back to pass and then scrambling.
All of it added up to an uninspiring debut for CU.
“We’ll have to go back and watch the film before we can truly say,” Lindgren said of the struggles on offense against Hawaii. “We had the turnovers, we missed some open throws. I think it was just a combination of things, really.
“We weren’t at our best, we weren’t sharp and we never found our rhythm.”
Footnotes. Linebacker Jaleel Awini traveled with the Buffs to Honolulu but did not play. He suffered a leg injury in a fall before CU’s trip. Wide receiver Donovan Lee also did not play. He has been suspended for CU’s first two games for violating team rules.
Hawaii announced that 24,255 tickets were distributed for Thursday’s game, but only 19,511 fans came through the turnstiles.
