From youth football on up, Brennan Marion has seen his offense work.
The creator of the Go-Go offense has made it work in different ways, too, and with different types of players.
Thatap why the first-year offensive coordinator of the Colorado Buffaloes is confident as spring practices near the finish line. CU will wrap up spring ball with the annual Black & Gold Day on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Folsom Field.
“We’re definitely going to be explosive on offense this year,” Marion said Thursday, after the Buffs’ completed their 14th practice of spring.
Don’t expect to see much of that explosiveness on Saturday, though.
“It’ll be vanilla,” he said. “Sorry fans, it’ll be vanilla.”
During his coaching career, Marion’s offense has rarely looked vanilla on game day.
Prior to this year, Marion has been either a coordinator or head coach for six seasons at four different schools (Howard, William & Mary, UNLV and Sacramento State). His offenses averaged at least 29.9 points in all but one of those seasons. The exception was William & Mary posting 25.3 points per game in 2019, but that was nearly a 12-points per game improvement over the previous year.
That track record is a main reason why CU head coach Deion Sanders hired Marion in the offseason to improve a CU attack that averaged just 20.9 points per game in 2025.
“You’ve got to be excited about it,” Sanders said. “The main thing you got to be excited about is the production that he’s had in college football. He’s averaged well over 30 points a game and thatap the threshold that you all know that we want; when we score 30 points a game we’re pretty successful.”
While CU has plenty of work to do to get the offense up to full speed by the opener on Sept. 3 against Georgia Tech, Marion expressed excitement about the talent on the roster and what the Buffs have accomplished this spring.
“We have big humans there (on the line) and then … everybody who can touch the ball on offense can score a touchdown on one play,” Marion said. “We don’t have anybody who’s like a possession guy or he’ll just inch it down there. We have all explosive players that can hit home runs. So itap going to be exciting out there on the field.”
In 2022, Marion was the receivers coach at Texas. While the Longhorns didn’t employ the full Go-Go offense, Marion saw the vision of what it could look like with huge linemen.
“We did a few plays of it at Texas and I was like, ‘Man, we could really do this,’” he said.
So, when he got to CU in December, he said there was an emphasis on, “We wanted to build a wall of big humans, right? Like, I want the biggest humans you can get.”
CU signed tackles such as Leon Bell (6-foot-8, 330 pounds), Bo Hughley (6-7, 350) and Jayven Richardson (6-6, 307) to go along with returner Larry Johnson III (6-7, 350). Guard Jose Soto (6-3, 310) followed Marion from Sacramento State and joins a room that already includes Yahya Attia (6-4, 340) and Chauncey Gooden (6-3, 380). And, at center they signed transfers Demtrius Hunter (6-2, 310) and Sean Kinney (6-2, 305).
Around the big guys, CU has explosive speed at receiver in DeAndre Moore, Kam Perry, Danny Scudero, Joseph Williams, Ernest Campbell and Quentin Gibson. Tight end Zach Atkins has big-play potential, too.
The running back room is filled with physical backs who “can hit the home run,” Marion said.
At quarterback, itap been a daily competition between sophomore Isaac Wilson and redshirt freshman JuJu Lewis, with true freshman Kaneal Sweetwyne battling, as well.
Marion said it was a tough start to spring for the quarterbacks as they were learning the offense, but he’s “proud of the guys in their development,” he said.
“The first part was them just learning what they were supposed to do and they’ve done a good job at that,” Marion said.
For everyone on the offense, itap been a challenging spring to learn the Go-Go offense, but Marion has taught his scheme to players from youth leagues, high school and different levels of college.
“Now itap kind of like the system is kind of foolproof when it comes to the language, the verbiage, and how to make it make sense to the guys,” he said. “So from that standpoint, itap more about them understanding the standards and how to run it effectively and getting the reps to do it.”
Marion said enough of the offense has been installed to be able to get through a full season. And, through 14 practices, the reps are piling up.
“I think through spring now we’re probably close to a thousand reps and then you add on all the walk-throughs and player-led practices we had before that,” he said. “The guys have really stacked reps. … We have a lot of our offense in and the guys have grasped it really well.”
