After more than eight months of prepar­ing for his first game as the Col­orado head foot­ball coach, Karl Dor­rell got to cel­e­brate a vic­to­ry in his debut.

He didn’t take long to turn the page.

On Mon­day, two days after the Buf­faloes’ 48–42 win against UCLA in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic-delayed sea­son open­er, Dor­rell reviewed the win with media, but also turned his focus on the Buffs’ next task. The unbeat­en Buffs (1–0) vis­it Stan­ford (0–1) on Saturday.

“It’s a good start for us,” Dor­rell said. “Def­i­nite­ly have a lot of issues to cor­rect in all phas­es. … We’re look­ing for­ward to anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty this weekend.”

Offen­sive­ly, the Buffs were more pro­duc­tive than expect­ed. Despite hav­ing a new starter at quar­ter­back (Sam Noy­er) and miss­ing their top return­ing rush­er (Alex Fontenot) and receiv­er (K.D. Nixon) from a year ago because of injuries, the Buffs hit the 48-point mark for just the fourth time in 83 games against Pac-12 oppo­nents since join­ing the con­fer­ence in 2011.

Noy­er threw for 257 yards and a touch­down, Jarek Brous­sard ran for 187 yards and three scores, and eight dif­fer­ent receivers caught pass­es. The Buffs scored on eight of 15 pos­ses­sions (not count­ing the end-of-game kneel downs) and they were 7‑for‑7 in the red zone, with six touchdowns.

Dor­rell wasn’t sur­prised the Buffs were so crisp.

“We have a high stan­dard right from the very begin­ning,” he said. “We felt that we have good coach­es, good play­ers. Our play­ers have done a great job with their train­ing and with their time and study­ing our sys­tems that allowed us to be pro­duc­tive this past Saturday.”

Dor­rell also praised the play call­ing by offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Dar­rin Chi­averi­ni, who is back in that role for the first time since 2018.

“I think Darren’s had a real­ly good start,” Dor­rell said. “I thought he called a real­ly, real­ly good game.”

Defen­sive­ly, the Buffs set the tone by forc­ing four first-half turnovers and turn­ing those into 21 points, but it was far from a pol­ished effort. The Buffs gave up 478 yards and were burned repeat­ed­ly by big plays. UCLA got on a roll and scored touch­downs on four of six sec­ond-half possessions.

“They got back in the game and we had to set­tle down, and our play­ers did set­tle down and exe­cut­ed a lit­tle bit bet­ter, had a cou­ple of real­ly impor­tant fourth down stops in the fourth quar­ter that helped solid­i­fy the game for us offen­sive­ly,” Dor­rell said.

After CU built a 35–7 lead, UCLA scored on plays of 52, 65, 15, 26 and 9 yards. In the last 35 min­utes, UCLA had 14 plays of 10 yards or more.

“I know we had some cov­er­age mis­takes in a cou­ple of places that allowed some big plays,” Dor­rell said. “We’re going to address those issues and try to get those things fixed for this com­ing week. There’s no ques­tion Stan­ford has seen all that; it’s on tape. So we have a pret­ty good agen­da in front of us to try to get a lot of things cleaned up.”

There isn’t much time to do that, but Dor­rell said he’s hap­py to return to the in-sea­son routine.

“Now we’re into our nor­mal game sea­son rhythm, so that’s good to have that process going,” he said.

Of course, this year that rou­tine isn’t exact­ly nor­mal. COVID-19 remains a chal­lenge and each day brings uncer­tain­ty about whether the game will even be played.

“You can’t get too far ahead of your skis, just because of the COVID thing,” Dor­rell said. “You have to real­ly treat each day of the week as if any­thing and every­thing can hap­pen. We have (COVID-19) tests every day and you’re always cross­ing your fin­gers about who’s going to get infect­ed by it and then (who will be impact­ed by con­tact trac­ing). There’s so much more that’s on all the coach­es’ plate right now, oth­er than football.”

A new chal­lenge this week is going on the road for the first time dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. CU has stayed healthy so far, but Dor­rell said there will be “extra test­ing pro­to­col” this week as they pre­pare to go to Cal­i­for­nia, which has strict health ordi­nances in place.

“We’re just hope­ful that we can con­tin­ue to play, to con­tin­ue to stay healthy and move for­ward to week two of the sea­son,” Dor­rell said.

Dor­rell has remind­ed his team about Wis­con­sin, which won its open­er on Oct. 23, but hasn’t played since, can­cel­ing two games because of an outbreak.

“We’re try­ing to edu­cate them along the way as we go and march through this sea­son,” Dor­rell said. “My approach with the team is that it’s day to day. Things change. Our cir­cum­stances could change, so we just have to roll with the punch­es as we roll out each day of the week.”