Not in one piece, at any rate.

“Are the older guys … cool with you?” I asked the best lineman to sign with the Buffs out of high school as we kibitzed outside the Champions Center on Monday.

“Yes,” Seaton, CU’s five-star true freshman tackle replied.

“So no hazing?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Hazing?”

He raised another.

“Like rookies carrying veterans’ pads at camp, stuff like that,” I replied. “It happens everywhere. You’ll find out at the next level. It’s what they do with rookies.”

Rookies! The light went on.

“Oh, like in The League,” Seaton said, referring to the National Football League.

“Yeah, in The League.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he continued, catching the drift and running to daylight.

“We don’t really have that. For me, freshman initiation is just — listening, you know? Just listening to the guys in front of me. They don’t really do the hazing. Or the fighting. No, we don’t do that. This is a brotherhood. Brothers fight. But not to the point where it’s like we don’t like each other.”

Seaton’s easy to like, stellar resume notwithstanding. His arrival gives quarterback Shedeur Sanders a wingman with a 6-foot-10 wingspan, which doesn’t hurt. No. 77 is  6-5, 285 pounds of mess-around-and-find-out, a lineman who ran pass routes at the Under Armour Next All-American Game and reportedly registered a closing speed of 17.7 miles per hour on GPS during another tilt. (Context: The fastest wideouts in the NFL usually max out at roughly 20-21 mph.)

“I feel like the O-line last year (at CU) lacked passion. And right now we’ve got a lot of it,” Seaton continued. “We’ve got a lot of dudes. We’re just going at it … One dude might have a bad day today, next day, it’s ‘Oh, I’m getting back at that guy.’ So I feel like passion is what this offense and defense has the most, and integrity, like, within themselves.”

Like his head coach, Seaton fears neither man nor microphone, regardless of how hot they happen to be at that given moment. The teen from D.C. calls it like he sees it. Even if some truths land harder than others.

“I actually thought this place was going to be really, really bad,” the Buffs’ star blocker said of Boulder, and his first impressions therein.

“This is my opinion. Everybody has their own opinion. But I took a risk. And then me coming in and having Coach Prime and everything he told me that he was going to do, he did.”

While CU sports staffers around us chuckled awkwardly and clutched imaginary pearls, we had to ask the big man to backpedal on that one.

“Bad?” I asked, raising an eyebrow of my own this time. “Define ‘Bad.'”

“Nothing really too crazy,” Seaton continued. “Just as far as ‘bad’ — you don’t know how much money we’re bringing in here. So you go to other universities — the Big Tens, the SECs, they’ve got $10 billion contracts, all (that) crazy stuff.

“So … I thought I was taking a risk. But then coming in here, it exceeded expectations. We actually have a great facility. We actually spend a lot of money on food, as you can see, which I was talking about (earlier). And everything’s exceeded expectations, from the littlest things to the biggest things for me.”

The biggest thing for Seaton this fall? Accent on the latter.

“His football knowledge, being a freshman, coming in (as) a guy straight out of high school, his knowledge is up there,” new offensive line coach Phil Loadholt said of Seaton earlier this year. “He’s a student of the game. He works hard. He comes up and watches film and does everything he’s supposed to do. So that’s been the most impressive part of him.

“Obviously, physically you can see that he’s advanced, you know what I mean? But his mental part has been impressive to me.”

Seaton is the thinking man’s hammer. Already lean, the freshman has spent roughly two months on a diet of fish in an effort to replace body fat with muscle. Hand him a syllabus, he’ll stick to the plan. It’s no coincidence that coachable stars make a habit of shining the longest. And brightest.

“Not too many people want to go to the … I call (CU) an ‘underdog school,’ you know?” Seaton stressed. “A lot of people want to go to a school that’s built — a school like Georgia (or) Bama where it’s, like, you’re (the) next guy up.

“But here … you never had (any) 5-star offensive linemen come here. You don’t have a Travis Hunter coming here every time. You don’t have a Shedeur Sanders that could be (here) every time. So it (was) a risk in that area. Not like it’s going to be bad or it’s going to be a terrible place to live in … just a risk as far as there’s nobody else to do it. So now it’s, like, ‘You can really be the first.'”

And if Seaton from the jump?

The kid might not be the last.

There have been 170 Colorado high school football alums selected in the draft all-time, But the state’s only seen three players drafted in the past two years, including just one in 2020 (Chatfield’s Dalton Keene) and the possibility of none in 2021 after no Colorado products were invited to the NFL combine.

A decade-by-decade comparison shows a similar decline in drafted Coloradans. The state had 34 players drafted in the first seven rounds during the 1990s (there were 12 rounds until 1994), including a record seven in ’96. In the two succeeding decades 22 locals were selected from 2000-09 and 15 from 2010-19.

The evolution of an elite high school football player into an NFL draft prospect is never a straight line, and Colorado will never match the numbers of more populous, football-rich states such as Texas, Florida and California. But the lack of Colorado products getting selected in the draft is indicative of where the state sits in the football hierarchy.

“It goes back to this state kind of being a recruiting pit in the past,” explained Nick Vinson, a sports performance coach who works with local prep recruits. “The guys who are getting invited to the NFL combine are all coming from Power 5 schools, minus the occasional popular D-II guy who gets called up. It’s really been a Power 5-or-die kind of thing, and there’s a big stigma around this state and about being a Colorado-grown football player, even though the top talent has risen.”

To Vinson’s point, while Colorado’s draft numbers are down, the number of the state’s FBS commits has increased each of the past four years. Colorado has 41 FBS commits in 2021, more than double what the state had in 2017 and a high over the eight years that CHSAA’s recruiting data tracks.

That recent increase suggests what many longtime high school coaches have expressed about Colorado: The state, which ranks 21st in population at around 5.8 million, has been historically overlooked by college recruiters. That’s enabled less players to get Power 5 scholarships, thus lessening the state’s chances that those prep stars — some of whom turn into standouts at the mid-major FBS, FCS and Division II levels — are eventually drafted.

“We are underestimated as a state in terms of the football talent here, and I’ve maintained that for the last 20-plus years,” said Cherry Creek coach Dave Logan, a former NFL receiver who is also the Broncos’ play-by-play radio voice. “Based on the size of the population of the state we have here, this state turns out more than its fair share of really good high school football players who go on and become good college players. But the reality of that is, it’s a completely different step to envision what a guy’s skill set will look like on the NFL level.”

Take the examples of four recent notable Colorado prep football players, all of whom had differing recruiting paths but similar, undrafted outcomes.

• Jake Moretti was a highly-recruited, “sure thing” out of Pomona who initially pledged to Ohio State before flipping to CU. Moretti probably would’ve been a high pick in the NFL draft this year, but an array of injuries kept his college career from getting out of the blocks, and he was forced to retire due to medical issues.

• Phillip Lindsay came into the national spotlight at CU after starring at Denver South, but still wasn’t invited to the combine in 2018 or even drafted. He signed with the Broncos and posted consecutive 1,000-yard rushing seasons. Following an injury-plagued 2020, Lindsay signed a one-year contract last month with the Houston Texans.

• Mike Purcell (Highlands Ranch) and Tanner Gentry (Grandview) were also under-recruited out of high school and both starred at Wyoming, Purcell on the defensive line and Gentry at wideout. But neither Purcell, now the Broncos’ starting nose tackle, nor the Bills’ Gentry so much as earned a combine invite.

“Tanner Gentry had almost 1,400 yards (receiving) and 14 touchdowns (in 2016) and didn’t get a combine invite,” Vinson said. “But then there’s guys from Florida with 300 yards and four touchdowns that are getting them — it doesn’t make any sense. If he would’ve gotten an invite to the combine, he 100% gets drafted. If he would’ve gotten more (major) D-I scholarships out of high school, he would’ve probably put on a show somewhere else in college, eventually gotten that combine invite. It’s a domino effect.”

Tim Jenkins, who runs a local football training company, said that domino effect can be addressed at the high school level by taking a page from the playbook of a football-obsessed state like Texas.

“People want to hear our state is under-recruited, which is definitely a factor, but it’s under-recruited because when (colleges) come and look at our state, they don’t see a lot of people taking it as seriously as other states and as a full-time, year-round deal,” Jenkins said. “High school programs have gotten better in the last few years as far as having a plan for these guys, and that’s why we’re seeing such a different recruiting climate now than we even saw five years ago.”

According to Jenkins, any top-tier Colorado player who has dreams of playing for a Power 5 program, and then getting drafted into the NFL, should consider making football his primary focus.

“College coaches get on stage and all say they want multi-sport athletes, and they all recruit from IMG Academy,” said Jenkins, referring to the boarding school in Bradenton, Fla., that attracts high school players from all over the country. “It’s hard to spend time on (football) when people are advising you that you need to play every sport. The normal high school kid definitely should play multiple sports and enjoy his high school experience. But kids that end up in the NFL draft aren’t normal high school kids.

“If your dad is a brain surgeon, he doesn’t go and change car tires to become more well-rounded in his skills. He keeps doing brain surgery, all the time, obsessively. So that’s where the multi-sport thing doesn’t make sense to me with the (elite) kids, and it’s showing up in the draft.”

Logan, a multi-sport proponent who starred in football, basketball and baseball at Wheat Ridge in the early 70’s, “completely and totally reject(s) that idea.”

Count him as among those who aren’t as concerned with the state’s declining draft numbers, as Logan believes those numbers, like the state’s recruiting numbers, are cyclical.

“Every single year we have good football players who are available here, and some programs have found Colorado to be a pretty good place to recruit,” Logan said. “I don’t know if there’s a lot we can do to gain a higher profile (as a state) other than continue to turn out good high school football players.”

Jenkins also believes that in order for more Colorado stars to reach the NFL, today’s prep players should be more focused on year-round weight and speed training, 7-on-7 leagues and other competitive football programs/camps. Jenkins even argues for college-style “spring football,” envisioning a slate of padded practices and scrimmages in April that would “keep the sport front and center all the time.”

“The way we catch up in recruiting and in the draft is we make sure we have year-round, developmental programs for these kids,” Jenkins said. “Whether that’s through the high school or a program like (Jenkins Elite), it doesn’t matter… And there needs to be a push for spring football, because if you want to talk about the states that are killing it, the majority of them have spring practice. If you go to Texas you’re going to see actual spring football the way they do it in college.”

For now? Purcell said Coloradans who might be passed over in the draft in a couple weeks should use their home state’s recent drafting trend, and its less-than-glitzy football rep, as motivation.

“The way I look at it, (Colorado’s football reputation) just puts another chip on my shoulder,” Purcell said. “I’m one of those guys who plays with a chip on my shoulder regardless, because I’ve always been an underdog. If players from Colorado feel that way, they should put that chip on their shoulder and just prove people wrong.”

Coloradans in the NFL

A look at some of the locals are already in the NFL, and ones who have a chance of getting drafted this month.

2021 impact players (*undrafted): Broncos NT Mike Purcell*, Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey, Broncos LG Dalton Risner, Texans RB Phillip Lindsay*, Buccaneers C Ryan Jensen*, Chargers RB Austin Ekeler*, Ravens DE Calais Campbell, Giants OL Nate Solder, free agent OL Ben Garland*, Rams DE Morgan Fox*, Vikings WR Olabisi Johnson, Jaguars S Andrew Wingard*, Raiders K Daniel Carlson, Packers P JK Scott

Possible 2021 draftees: Castle View/Air Force OL Noah Laufenberg, Regis Jesuit/Nebraska TE Jack Stoll, Valor Christian/Virginia OL Dillon Reinkensmeyer, Fairview/Michigan LB Carlo Kemp

It always sounds nice — the top in-state university prioritizing bringing in the best in-state high school recruits.

And the staff at the Grading the Week offices give it a firm stamp of approval whenever we hear it.

CU’s in-state recruiting — B-

We’re just waiting on that to happen in Boulder.

On Wednesday, the Buffs missed out on Colorado’s top high school football players yet again on national signing day, with the state’s two four-star recruits in signing with out-of-state powers Oregon (Terrance Ferguson, Heritage, TE) and Texas A&M (Trey Zuhn, Fossil Ridge, OT).

It marked the fourth consecutive year the Buffs were unable to reel in one of the state’s four-star recruits in 247Sports’ composite rankings, making them 0-for-7 with such players since Pomona’s Jake Moretti committed to CU in 2017.

Of course, CU has had three different head coaches during that time period, as well as three losing seasons. So it’s probably asking a lot to expect Karl Dorrell to start flipping four stars in his first recruiting cycle in Boulder.

At least Dorrell was able to convince a top-five in-state recruit (Erik Olsen, Heritage, TE) to stick around. That’s something Midnight Mel Tucker failed to do in the previous two recruiting cycles before bolting for Michigan State in February. We’ll count that as progress.

Larry Scott — F

If the CU Buffs decided to leave the Pac-12, would commissioner Larry Scott even notice?

Given the way he’s treated the Buffs during the past two weeks, the Grading the Week staff is starting to wonder.

It started, of course, with the conference’s ruling that even if CU went unbeaten during the 2020 regular season, it would be denied a chance to compete for the league title if the USC Trojans did the same.

Then came this week’s debacle.

To rehash: After CU’s loss to Utah, the Buffs finished second in the South and were scheduled to play Oregon in Los Angeles.

The idea was that both teams would serve as potential replacement opponents for Friday night’s conference championship should USC (South) or Washington (North) be knocked out by COVID-19.

No plan was made, however, to provide a replacement opponent for the Buffs in the (extremely likely) scenario Oregon had to step in for UW. And, in a not-so-shocking development, the team that was unavailable for its previous game due to COVID (UW) suffered a similar fate for Friday night’s affair.

Who could’ve seen that coming?

Apparently not Scott or the Pac-12, who also put CU in the awkward position of having to send an equipment truck to a point midway between Boulder and Los Angeles late this week on the off chance the Buffs were called in to replace USC for Friday night. At least Larry had the decency to express “empathy” for the Buffs’ plight.

So CU has that going for it, which really isn’t all that nice.

Facundo Campazzo enthusiasts — A

We’re one week into the 2020-21 NBA preseason, and Nuggets Twitter already has itself a new Bae.

His name is Facundo Campazzo, and he’s a 5-foot-11 Argentinian passing virtuoso also blessed with the ability to perpetually give a darn — no matter the setting.

Needless to say, Nuggets Nation is swooning.

While the Grading the Week staff reserve the right to be skeptical of an undersized international becoming a long-term NBA contributor, we share in the excitement.

Tweet out all of the passes, Nuggets Twitter. We shall bathe in them.

Now, they have experience to go along with what is becoming a fairly deep pool of talent in the backfield.

“I think right now that we have multiple guys that can play and I’m going to do my best to develop them all so they all can get out there and show what they can do,” running backs coach Darian Hagan said in February after CU added two backs on signing day.

Although concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus have created uncertainty about the 2020 football season, CU continues to prepare. BuffZone is previewing each position group for the Buffs. In this installment, we look at the running backs.

When CU signed Ashaad Clayton from Warren Easton (La.) High School and Jayle Stacks from Cherry Creek High School, that was done when previous head coach Mel Tucker was still leading the program. Just a few days later, Tucker bolted for Michigan State, but the emphasis on having talented running backs hasn’t changed for new head coach Karl Dorrell.

Although Dorrell and offensive coordinator Darrin Chiaverini are both former receivers who want a high-powered passing attack, Dorrell said, “We definitely want to have a run threat and be able to run the football.”

The tools are there to do just that.

In his first season as the starter, Alex Fontenot rushed for 874 yards and five touchdowns. His 79.5 yards per game ranked sixth in the Pac-12 and is second among returning players. Now a junior, he averaged 4.72 yards per attempt last season.

As a true freshman, Jaren Mangham added 441 yards and three touchdowns, ranking 16th in the conference in rushing yards.

CU and Oregon are the only schools in the conference returning two 400-yard rushers.

The Buffs, in fact, didn’t lose any scholarship running backs from last season. Rising sophomore Deion Smith also returns after showing flashes of his talent, with 23 carries for 68 yards.

Two other sophomores are back, as well. Jarek Broussard has a versatile skill set but has yet to get on the field; he missed the 2019 season with a knee injury. Joe Davis played special teams as a true freshman last season, but impressed Hagan with his all-around ability.

While Fontenot and Mangham were the top two backs last year, the talent of Smith, Broussard and Davis will force them to battle for their spots.

“I feel like the competition makes everyone better around us,” Mangham said during the winter. “And I feel like we’ve got a solid room.”

What makes the running back room even more intriguing is the additions of Clayton and Stacks.

Clayton comes to CU as a four-star recruit and his .9284 rating on 247Sports is the highest in CU’s class. In the last eight years, offensive lineman Jake Moretti (2017 class) is the only CU signee with a higher rating.

The 6-foot, 200-pound Clayton rushed for 2,264 yards and 32 touchdowns as a senior, including 1,186 yards and 18 touchdowns in five playoff games.

Stacks will join CU as a blueshirt and he will instantly become the Buffs’ biggest running back, at 5-11, 230 pounds. In helping Cherry Creek to the Class 5A state title last year, Stacks rushed for 1,155 yards and 15 touchdowns, while catching 14 passes for 196 yards and five touchdowns.

Hagan acknowledges that if everyone stays healthy, it will be tough to get more than three or four backs on the field, but he also believes the competition for playing time is going to be intense.

“They all say the same stuff, that they want to have competition,” Hagan said. “I always tell them the best people are going to play, but don’t shy away from competition. You’re going to always have competition in your life. Why run from it?”

With a strong group of returners and exceptional young talent joining the mix, CU has perhaps its deepest stable of running backs in at least a decade.

“If we do what we’re supposed to do (at running back),” Hagan said, “I think that we can have a very special year.”

Here’s an initial look at the projected running backs for the 2020 season:

Position: Running backs

Seniors: None

Juniors (2019 statistics): Alex Fontenot, 6-feet, 195 pounds (11 starts, 185 att., 874 yards, 5 TD; 27 catches, 122 yards).

Sophomores: Jarek Broussard, 5-9, 180 (redshirted; injured); Joe Davis, 5-11, 210 (6 att., 13 yards); Jaren Mangham, 6-2, 215 (1 start, 107 att., 441 yards, 3 TD; 10 catches, 41 yards); Deion Smith, 6-0, 190 (23 att., 88 yards; 4 catches, 28 yards).

Redshirt freshmen: None.

True freshmen: Ashaad Clayton, 6-0, 200; Jayle Stacks, 5-11, 230.

Players lost: Chase Sanders, 6-0, 195 (walk-on).

“When I was growing up, I definitely was a fan, but they weren’t great,” Chase Penry, the venerated Cherry Creek High School wideout, said of the Colorado Buffaloes’ football program. “When they won the (Pac-12) South, I got really excited about it. And the next year, they kind of fell off.”

And the year after that. And …

“But as soon as coach (Mel) Tucker got hired, he wanted to see me at camps and he invited me to camps,” Penry continued. “I went to a camp and had a good day against a lot of Southern kids, kids from Florida and Georgia.”

Tucker offered him a scholarship. The junior returned the favor in kind last week, becoming the second in-state prospect from the Class of 2021 — Vista Peak lineman Braylen Nelson was the other — to commit to the Buffs

“They’re doing better,” 247Sports’ Brandon Huffman said of the Buffs, who, with the second national signing day rolling in Wednesday, have long since turned the page to recruiting for 2021 and 2022. “Where I think it was hurting them the most wasn’t the top-tier guys. It was losing the second-tier guys. It was like nobody wanted to stay in-state.”

Fourteen months into The Tucker Era, everybody’s singing a different tune. The Buffs have at least 10 offers out to Colorado’s 2021 crop, the most for one in-state class since putting out a reported 11 in 2017.

CU’s first three commits for 2021 are all locals, as is the first commit for 2022, Palmer Ridge standout Anthony Costanzo.

“Some of the young guys, they were maybe sophomores in high school, they were like, ‘OK, CU’s got a new coach,’ ” Tucker recalled. “And they’re like, ‘Let����ap see.’ I think they’re starting to like what they see.”

CSU. Nebraska. Arizona State. Stanford. Washington. The Buffs only won five games in Tucker’s first season, but they were all keepers.

“The environment (at Folsom Field) was amazing. It was insane,” said Penry, who attended home dates against the Huskers (overtime win), Stanford (last-second win), and Arizona (five-point loss).

“When they won that (Nebraska) game, the whole stadium went onto the field. That was a special moment. That was one of the coolest environments I’ve ever been a part of.”

One of the challenges that surprised Tucker most when he hit the ground running last winter was the slightly uphill climb that Buffs football had with teens, especially the touted variety, within a 75-mile radius. From 2010-19, only one prospect ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in-state by 247Sports committed to CU — Pomona star Jake Moretti in 2017.

“Let����ap not fool ourselves,” Tucker said. “We have to prove to people that we can build a program. So that����ap part of it. And we’re not going to get a pass from anyone, including our in-state players and coaches.”

So Tucker got out there like a politician in canvassing mode, shaking hands, building a ground game by putting boots on the ground. The best salesmen know how to craft different messages to different audiences. Pitching one kid in Georgia or Louisiana or Ohio that they’re ready for a change, that they need mountains and one of the best college towns in the world in their life, then turning around and convincing a prospect at Valor or Creek that there’s nothing they’d want in Eugene or Tuscaloosa or Lincoln that they can’t find on the Hill.

“You can’t assume anything,” Tucker said. “You can’t assume they’re going to like CU just because they’re here.

“In some cases, you’ve got to recruit them even harder. And sometimes, it����ap an even tougher sell, just because of what they’ve seen over their time.”

Last fall helped, giving promises from the trail a body of evidence to stand on. So did 2020 recruits such as Creek lineman Carson Lee, who’d known Penry for more than a decade.

“He was in my ear,” Penry said. “(But) even before I decided to commit, (Lee) sent me a text that said to make sure it was the right decision for me and my family. And he wanted me to make my own decision.

“It felt right. It just felt like home.”

“It����ap a different world,” Jake Moretti reflects from one of the metal bleachers inside the CU Buffs’ indoor practice facility. “It was funny: I went down to my brother’s football game, I was talking to all my old coaches and some of my old buddies, and a couple of them said they didn’t even recognize me. So I’ve definitely gotten that a couple of times. It����ap nice, man.”

The franchise left tackle is more of an outside linebacker now, a svelte 6-foot-4, 230-ish-pound frame. Same rock. More chisel. The brace is off the left foot. The nerves, finally, are in a good place.

So, more importantly, is the soul.

“I’m starting to kind of turn that corner now,” says the former Buffs and Pomona football star who opted for a medical retirement in the summer after more than three years of knee issues. “I’m just now finally out of the brace and able to live a relatively normal life.”

We don’t think about the rest of our normal lives, until we have to. And never before 20, if we can help it. Teenage boys, once the growth spurts kick in, are especially famous for confusing newfound strength with complete and utter invulnerability.

Moretti was invulnerable, too, once. Here was this 14er of a kid, a warrior poet blessed with an i7 chip for a brain and a Sherman tank for a body. A U.S. Army All-American. A four-star, national top-100 prospect. A 4.2 GPA student.

“You’re talking about the Christian McCaffrey of offensive linemen in Colorado,” says Jay Madden, his coach at Pomona. “That����ap what he was going to be. He was going to be a first-round draft choice and a captain at Ohio State. All the college scouts, they said, ‘We see a 10-year NFL vet.’ That was the kind of attention he had.”

This past August, a few weeks before his 21st birthday, the Christian McCaffrey of offensive linemen looked at his left leg, looked at the rest of his life, looked at his leg again, and walked away. Because he still could.

“That adrenaline rush that you have when you run out on the field and you’re about to go play another team, that����ap tough to beat,” Moretti says. “But I had to look forward, look at my future, and make sure that was secure.”

***

Madden had just pulled into a McDonald’s drive-thru to get his kid a quick bite when his cell buzzed, and a Columbus telephone number popped up. Urban Meyer.

“I’ve got some bad news,” the Ohio State coach said.

While running in a non-contact drill at a Buckeyes position camp in June 2016, Moretti’s leg inexplicably locked up. All 280 pounds became gruesomely twisted, the pressure bending and hyperextending the joint.

“It bent in and I felt three pops,” Moretti explains. “And for some reason, it bent out to the left, and I felt another two or three pops.

“Have you ever watched the movie, ‘The Revenant?’ I kind of felt like Leonardo DiCaprio after he got mauled by the bear. I was crawling around. It was one of those pains where it was so weird, I didn’t even know what do with it.”

A freak accident had torn all the major ligaments of his left knee, ripped his hamstring off the bone and stretched the nerve almost past the point of recognition.

“I couldn’t lift my left foot at all,” Moretti says. “It just dragged.”

Madden recalls Meyer telling him that they were going to stand by Moretti “no matter what,” but that the “no matter what” was conditional: The Pomona coach says that the Buckeyes preferred to hedge their bets, wondering if they could include Moretti in the 2018 recruiting class instead of his scheduled 2017 one — he’d even graduated high school early — so they could see just how well the knee was going to heal.

“They were trying to push him back and that upset him, and I didn’t blame him,” Madden says. “They figured, ‘Football, football, football.’ They’re not thinking about Jake.”

Moretti sat out his senior season, flipping from the Buckeyes to the Buffs in November 2016. He continued to rehab the knee — anywhere from two to three hours per day — while taking a redshirt in the fall of 2017.

The big lug eventually made his collegiate debut in a 45-13 rout of CSU in the 2018 Rocky Mountain Showdown, his first game action in almost three years. Moretti appeared on eight snaps against the Rams, but would see only 57 more the rest of the season.

As old pains recurred, no medical avenue went unexplored, no stone left unturned. Doctors found scar tissue that had formed in the leg stymied the blood flow and wouldn’t allow it to heal correctly. A year after nerve decompression surgery, Moretti still couldn’t lift his left foot.

Over the winter, they took another stab — literally, this time opting to transfer a healthy inside tendon from his right ankle over to his left.

“So that was going great, and then about five months out, that ruptured,” Moretti says. “And that one just got really scary for me. That surgery was supposed to be the last hurrah, to get me over the hump. Like, ‘You should be able to work normally for the rest of your life.’ And when I tore that, I was just …”

A pause.

“I love football. But I’ve got to make sure I’m able to walk when I’m 40.”

***

In an alternate reality — another timeline, another universe — the scouts are lining up to make Jake Moretti a millionaire, drawing up contracts that could set him up, financially, for the rest of his life. But the focus these days is less about the doors that just closed and more about the windows that are starting to open up.

An International Affairs major, the former CU tackle is on track to graduate next year, and has been told he’ll remain on scholarship until then. First-year coach Mel Tucker and new offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic have left every avenue, every pathway, wide open. Moretti has spent this season, what would’ve been his redshirt sophomore campaign, as a volunteer student assistant with the strength and conditioning staff, a bridge between the new regime and the locker room.

“I definitely catch myself, sometimes, just sitting there thinking about what could have been,” Moretti says. “How life could’ve been different. The way I look at it is, obviously, this is a really bad injury. But in the grand scheme of things, I’ve had a hell of a life, if this is the worst thing that happens to me. My family’s healthy. I have great friends. I’m part of a great university with good people around me. So as (expletive) as it was, I’m still very fortunate to be where I’m at.”

“I think he struggled plenty,” Madden says. “But he’s a tough-minded kid. He knows that there are a lot worse things going on in the world than him getting hurt. But he also knows it really sucks. He’s not going to cry for himself. He’s just not that kind of person.

“I just hope, now that he’s down to 240-245 pounds, that it takes some stress off that (knee), so he can lead a normal life. I just want him to be able to jog with his son, be able to play catch with his kids. He’s going to be successful.”

Success is relative. Football, even for the greats, is a fleeting tease. Family and friends, the real friends, are forever.

“I had so many people supporting me, I just wish I was able to perform better for them,” Moretti says. “It was always kind of a bummer to me, just kind of letting those people down. I don’t know. I’m just trying to think of the phrase…”

Another pause.

“I got dealt a hand of cards. And you’ve just got to play them, you know what I mean?”

After all, as Moretti reminds us, heroes come in all shapes. All sizes, too.

In the big picture, maybe bigger.

“The Pac-12 doesn’t get a lot of elite defensive linemen like that,” Brandon Huffman, national recruiting editor at 247Sports.com, told The Denver Post after Alfano, a 5-star Alabama defensive end, announced late Monday that he was joining Tucker’s CU Buffs as a transfer.

“And now (the Buffs) got a player that was the best in the country, with a renewed focus.”

Alfano stands for everything Tucker wants the Buffs to be about. Hunger, speed, freakish athleticism and a relentless approach. A 6-foot-4, 280-pound frame with a 4.8-second 40 time and a reported 37-inch vertical leap.

On paper, he’s basically Russell Westbrook in pads. If CU wants to look like Oregon, CU has to start looking like Alfano, all over the roster.

It����ap about planting flags. It����ap about keeping to your vows, backing up the mission statement. Tucker never promised a rose garden — or even a bowl — in Year 1. But he promised to raise the talent level across the board, promised that he would import the kind of talent to CU that would make made pundits and social media sit up and do a double-take.

Alfano gave Twitter whiplash.

Ranked as the No. 1 defensive end prospect in the nation for the class of 2019 by 247Sports, the New Jersey native is the sexiest name to pledge to CU gold since Pomona tackle Jake Moretti, a national top 100 recruit, headlined the class of 2017. Alfano’s the first 247Sports 5-star get for the Buffs since Darrell Scott, a tailback out of Ventura, Calif., topped the class of 2008.

“The pick-up of Alfano is significant,” Huffman said. “For one, he had suitors and schools still pursuing him on the east coast, the south and the Atlantic (region), closer to his home. But he chose to go to Colorado.”

It does give pause that Alfano entered the transfer portal under curious circumstances, basically vanishing from the Crimson Tide’s roster, and from the university altogether, in September, reportedly because of his ailing grandmother. But during a five-game losing streak that����ap soured Tucker’s first-season honeymoon, it was a shot in the arm for a fan base that����ap had to deal with punch after punch to the gut since Columbus Day.

Afalo changes the landscape, perceptions, and, hopefully, some recent historical trendlines. The Buffs’ track record with 5-star prep talents this century has played out between star-crossed and spotty: Marcus Houston, a 2000 tailback commitment out of Thomas Jefferson, got hurt and eventually finished up his collegiate days at CSU. Ryan Miller, a 2007 guard/tackle from Columbine High, battled a broken fibula and repeated head trauma that would eventually cut short his career. The aforementioned Scott wound up finishing his college eligibility at South Florida.

“Development is key,” Huffman said. “(Alfano) knows Mel Tucker’s track record, and knows that playing under Tucker will give him the opportunity to be developed under a strong defensive mind while also giving him a chance to change the pace from playing at Alabama, and being under the SEC microscope of which he would be playing in.”

The College Football Playoff selection committee releases its first set of rankings later Tuesday. If CU is going to be a player on that stage in the years to come, the Alfano get was one heck of a first step.

This kid? The one driving guys into the ground like he’s a two-legged jackhammer … afraid to use his hands?

“See, he didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Holliday, Columbine’s assistant varsity football coach, says of the Rebels’ star senior offensive tackle Andrew Gentry, the No. 1 prep prospect in the state. “He actually was very, very scared, in a way, right away.

“He played a bit slower. He wasn’t nearly as aggressive … he felt like, anytime he touched a kid, being 11 years old, every time he touched someone, they were on their back or they were crying. And Andrew’s like, ‘I’m so sorry.’

“And I said, ‘OK, there’s going to be a process.’”

RELATED: Colorado prep football: 40 impact players to watch in Class 5A

The journey from wallflower to 4-star road-grader started more than a decade ago, but the corner turned for good in the 6th grade. At the Carnation Bowl, Holliday explains, while defending a screen for the South JeffCo Little Rebels, Gentry — already 6-foot-something as a 12-year-old — managed to get his giant mitts around an opponents’ screen pass. After the gentle giant cradled the ball and ran it all the way back for a score, it was like somebody had flipped a light on.

“And literally, it changed his life,” Holliday says. “From that point, he became more aggressive, more willing, a more coachable type of kid. Who knew that there was something that could come from a stupid interception on a screen pass, but it was a moment that just turned it.

“There was no coach — none of us, really, there’s no credit or anything that anybody could take. He knew where he was going and how he was doing it and the only thing we could help (with) was the system. It����ap kind of like the rest is history after that.”

And the hits just keep on coming. The 6-foot-8, 310-pound Gentry rolls into the opening weekend of the Colorado prep football season ranked as the No. 57 player in the country for the Class of 2020 by 247Sports.com — making him the first in-state prospect to crack that site’s national 100 since Pomona’s Jake Moretti wound up No. 94 in the 2016-17 recruiting cycle.

Despite leading the pack in a banner year for senior in-state linemen — Gentry, Valor’s Roger Rosengarten, Mullen’s Aidan Keanaaina and Eaglecrest����ap Reece Atteberry comprise four of 247’s top six Colorado prospects — the Columbine standout has his eyes on another slice of history: Paving a path for the Rebels to snatch the program’s first 5A state title since 2011. Unfinished business.

“You try not to talk about state championships, you just want to focus on the task at hand,” said Gentry, whose Rebels were unbeaten last fall before falling to Cherry Creek in the 5A semifinals.

“But it����ap just one of those things (I’ve wanted) since we were little kids, since I played on a little league team in 2011, when Columbine last won a state championship. We all said, ‘That����ap going to be us our senior year.’ That����ap the only thing I’ve got on the bucket list.”

This kid? The one who’s got offers, at last count, from 32 Power 5 programs, including 17 of the AP preseason top 25 and seven of the AP top 10? You’re saying he first came into your orbit because you saw him playing … tennis?

“It was so crazy,” Holliday laughs. “He was like a 6-foot, 250-pound kid out on the tennis court as we were actually practicing football next to this tennis court where he was practicing tennis. I want to say he was in his 4th grade year.

“I said to the guys, I’m like, ‘That����ap not right.’ There were some kids on this little league football team that should be playing tennis and here’s this kid on the tennis court that should be playing football.”

RELATED: Class 5A football preseason top 10: Can someone knock off Valor Christian?

It����ap part of the legend now, the narrative and the journey. The short version is that Holliday was old pals with Gentry’s uncle, and eventually managed to persuade Andrew’s mom and dad to get him to swap the racket for a set of shoulder pads.

In sixth grade, Holliday recalled, Gentry was “a foot-and-a-half taller than anybody else, and probably another 80-100 pounds (heavier), that was for sure. He wasn’t like the rest of the kids in that respect. His growth cycle hit much earlier than anybody else’s.”

That was usually enough. Before that Carnation Bowl moment, Gentry was content just to screen much-smaller defenders out of the way, to serve as a moving wall, rarely extending his arms.

“Eventually, you started to see in that 6th grade year, and certainly though that 7th and 8th grade year, where he would latch on to a defensive lineman and he would drive that kid 15, 20 yards downfield,” Holliday says. “He would literally engage his hands and keep moving. And if he would knock that guy over, he would find the next guy.”

And once the light turned on, it never went off again. This summer, Gentry’s maxed out at 315 on the bench, 520 on the squat and 280 on the clean. Last August, he was putting up 255 on the bench, 405 on squats and cleaning 235.

“You really don’t know how big he is until he’s in a ‘normal-person’ setting,” chuckles Taylor Sheridan, who’s been training Gentry at Elite Speed Sports Performance the last three years. “When he walked in our gym, the first thing he did was he self-consciously ducked through the door. His Columbine shirt barely fit, barely reached his waist. I welcomed him and two of our trainers, who are barely 5-foot somethings, they stood behind him and probably stared for 10 minutes while were talking and working out.

“After I don’t know how how many weeks and months, everybody in the gym would go, ‘How old is this kid?’ And I’d tell them, and they would’ve believe me. It was hilarious.”

This kid? The one who nailed a 1340 on the SAT? The one toting a 4.3 GPA on a 4.0 scale?

The one who was granted an audience with the president of BYU, Kevin Worthen, during one of his visits to Provo? The one who an assistant coach from Virginia wanted to meet so badly, in person, that said coach waited for four hours until Gentry had completed an AP World History exam first?

“This coach stayed four hours,” Gentry says, “just so he could say, ‘Hi’ to me.”

Mission accomplished; Virginia remains among the gifted lineman’s top 5 final schools — along with Stanford, Michigan, Notre Dame and BYU, where older brother JT is currently a freshman offensive lineman.

Big brother returned last year from an LDS mission in Hungary; Andrew will undertake a two-year mission of his own before starting the clock on his collegiate eligibility.

With this kid, chances are, it’ll be worth the wait.

“(JT) would love to have us together at BYU,” Andrew says, “but at the same time, (he said), ‘It����ap your decision, I’ll support you whatever your decision is.’ And we would only play together for a year, with (my) mission and everything else. At the same time, when you’re talking about schools like Michigan and Stanford and Virginia, it����ap hard to turn those down.”

It����ap not that the peaches up here don’t rock harder than Hendrix. It����ap that there are more of them down there, and it ain’t even close.

As of early Saturday morning, the had, according to 247Sports.com, made 26 offers to Class of 2020 football prospects from the state of Georgia. Perspective: The other five Pac-12 South programs, combined, had offered 33.

The , meanwhile, had sent out 37 offers to Georgians from the Class of 2020. More perspective: The other 11 programs in the Mountain West, combined, had offered 45.

“You need to go where the fish are,” SEC Network analyst and former Georgia star lineman Matt Stinchcomb says of CU’s and CSU’s growing fixation with the Peach State. “That����ap not to say there aren’t some good-looking fish up there. But there’s just not as many.”

Not by a long shot. Among 247Sports.com’s composite ranking of the top 100 national football prospects from 2015-19, you’ll find 57 Georgia natives, or an average of 11.4 per class. Over the last five years, we’ve only seen one Coloradoan crack that same top 100 — former Pomona lineman Jake Moretti, CU’s star-crossed star from the Class of 2017, a four-star talent who suffered a torn ACL at an Ohio State camp three years ago and is still working to recover.

“It����ap kind of the hotbed,” offers D.J. Shockley, another former Georgia star and Georgia native turned SEC Network analyst.

“You think about Florida, Georgia, Texas as kind of the hotbeds around the country for a lot of players. And I’ve got to be honest, Georgia and Georgia Tech can’t get them all.”

Cue CU coach Mel Tucker, a former Bulldogs defensive coordinator, priming the pipelines from the Front Range to Blue Ridge, fishing like there’s no tomorrow. CSU coach , a former Dawgs offensive coordinator and quarterback, went into his preseason camp with 10 former Georgia preps on the Rams roster.

The 247Sports.com composite top 100 for the Classes of 2020 and 2021 features, on average, a Georgia-kid-to-Colorado-kid ratio of about 9 to 1. Which is why the 2019 Rocky Mountain Showdown on Friday night is as much about turning heads in Athens and Marietta as it is Arvada and Montrose.

“It����ap a large, large number,” Stinchcomb continues. “One that you would be, I think, foolish to ignore, as fertile as this area is.”

***

For one evening, at least, Mile High is setting up to be Athens North, minus The Varsity restaurant����ap famous frosted orange shakes and onion rings.

Tucker was the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator over the previous three seasons under Kirby Smart before being tapped to replace this past December. Bobo’s Georgia connections run even deeper, having quarterbacked the Dawgs from 1993-97 before eventually rejoining the Dawgs as quarterbacks coach (2001-06) and offensive coordinator (2007-14) en route to taking the job at CSU.

Of the 10 coordinators or positional coaches on CU’s staff, five either played football in or coached in the state of Georgia. Among Bobo’s top lieutenants, it����ap six out of 10.

The family ties run deep between the two camps, too: Both Tucker and Bobo count Smart as a confidant, and the pair parlayed stellar runs as coordinators between the hedges into landing the two biggest college gigs in Colorado. Heck, when Tucker first got the Buffs job, one of the first congratulatory texts that pinged his phone was from Bobo, the Georgia alum and his first-ever opponent as CU’s coach.

“I know (Mike) through Kirby and through (CU defensive coordinator) Tyson Summer, those are great dudes, so I’m kind of connected,” says Tucker, who also worked with Smart on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama.

“I’ve seen him on the road recruiting. We’ve worked some camps together. I’ve seen him at some satellite camps. The coaching (profession) is kind of like a brotherhood. You’ve got the south Georgia deal going on, this clique of guys.”

As cliques go, Summers is probably the part of the Venn diagram that shares the most real estate with both staffs. A Georgia native, the Buffs’ new DC was a grad assistant at Georgia in 2005 while Bobo was the quarterbacks coach; the two used to hit the road on recruiting trips together.

During his inaugural season as the Rams’ coach in 2015, Bobo hired Summers to be his first defensive coordinator/safeties coach at CSU. After a pair of ill-fated seasons as the head coach with Georgia Southern, Summers returned to Athens as a defensive quality control consultant for Smart before moving back to the Front Range, this time with Tucker and the Buffs, nine months ago. The whole thing’s a tangled web, and Summers’ web, in particular, is more tangled than most.

“I think everybody involved on either side, they’re going to be trying to do their jobs to get their teams prepared,” Bobo says. “Tyson wants to kick our butt. I want to kick his butt.”

***

And not just on the field. Last December, not long after Summers joined Tucker’s staff, Austin Williams, a lineman from Tifton, Ga., and one of Bobo’s 37 Georgia offers — the third highest single-state concentration of Rams offers in the last CSU class after California and Texas — elected to de-commit from the Rams and ink with the Buffs.

Hey, all’s fair in love, war and recruiting.

Also? It����ap on, baby. Big-time. Of CU’s 26 reported Georgia offers, according to 247Sports, the Rams have made a play on at least eight of those prospects.

“Bobo knows, like Mel knows, lots of guys who have connections to the state of Georgia,” Shockley says. “It����ap a lot easier for guys who know (the state).”

Hook, line and sinker. In 2018, the last CU class to completely feature MacIntyre’s stamp, the Buffs only extended 2.8 percent of their 211 offers to Georgia kids, per the 247 database, compared to 3.3 for in-state prospects.

Enter Tucker, fresh from Athens, and the percentage of Peach State offers jumped to 6.7 percent for the Class of 2019 (with 3.6 percent extended toward Colorado prospects) and up to 8.6 percent — more than three times the volume from just two classes earlier — toward Georgians in 2020, with 2.7 percent of CU’s offers, so far, remaining in-state.

The Rams, unsurprisingly, have been even more aggressive down south, and with almost metronomic consistency. Some 15.8 percent and 14.8 percent of Bobo’s 2017 and 2018 offers, respectively, went to Georgia kids, compared to the 2.2 percent and 2.9 percent extended during those same cycles to in-state prospects. CSU’s offers in 2019 (14.4 percent to Georgia prospects; 7 percent to Coloradoans) and 2020 (14 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively) have followed a similar pattern.

“Just about every game is on TV, so kids know, kids have awareness of schools way outside their immediate geography,” Stinchcomb says. “And look, there’s a lot to sell about (Colorado) to kids that are interested. There are some kids here in (Georgia), really good players, two of them are leaving because they don’t like the heat, and they’re smart.

“It makes sense for (CU and CSU) to be down here, because there are a lot of good players. Spend time in the bullseye, and work your way out.”

Especially when the big fish are biting. And watching.

His body just isn’t cooperating.

The Colorado sophomore offensive lineman and former four-star recruit from Pomona High School in Arvada has decided to medically retire after a series of injuries have hampered him over the past three years.

“I can’t say enough good things about this (CU) program, from coaches to the trainers, doctors, and ADs,” Moretti said in a message to Buffzone. “They made sure I had everything possible to recover. Unfortunately it just didn’t work out and I needed to make sure I was able to have normal function with my leg in the future.”

At 6-foot-4, 280 pounds, Moretti was one of the top offensive line recruits in the country for the 2017 class. He was originally committed to Ohio State, but suffered a devastating knee injury during a Buckeyes camp in the summer of 2016. The injury caused Moretti to miss his senior season at Pomona, and he eventually decided to sign with CU.

Moretti enrolled early, in January of 2017, and has spent the past 30 months trying to get healthy.

When he was injured at the Ohio State camp, Moretti tore his ACL, dislocated his knee and stretched his peroneal nerve. The nerve issue proved to be the more troubling part of the injury. The damage caused Moretti to deal with “drop foot,” where he had difficulty lifting the front part of his foot at times, needing a brace to hold it in proper position.

“Sometimes I wish it was just the ACL,” Moretti told Buffzone last August when he returned to practice – on a limited basis – for the first time since the original injury.

Moretti made his collegiate debut in the 2018 season opener against Colorado State, playing eight snaps. It was his first game since his junior season at Pomona in 2015. In all, Moretti played in seven games last year, but logged just 65 snaps because of the difficulty to stay healthy.

Moretti did not participate in spring practices this year and suffered another setback that required foot surgery.

Several people within the CU program have said that throughout Moretti’s injury troubles, he’s never complained, yet continued to work hard to get on the field. Last year, he won the program’s Tyrone “Tiger” Bussey Award for “inspiration in the face of physical adversity.”

Receivers coach Darrin Chiaverini, the Buffs’ co-offensive coordinator during Moretti’s two seasons at CU, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “In all my years of playing and coaching I’ve never been around an individual that persevered and smiled everyday in the face of adversity like Jake Moretti!! This young man faced obstacles that most athletes will never face and did it with courage!! You will always be a Buff”