BOULDER — The face was pure pok­er, stone and dis­sat­is­fied. Karl Dor­rell knew the ques­tion was com­ing, the nar­ra­tive ele­phant in the room.

“It wasn’t an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence for me until the end of the game for our play­ers,” Dor­rell said, mat­ter-of-fact­ly, after CU’s sea­son-open­ing 48–42 win over UCLA on Sat­ur­day night before a lone­ly, near-emp­ty Fol­som Field.

“I’m proud of the play­ers. For me, per­son­al­ly, you know, I haven’t been on the UCLA side­lines in over 13 years. I’ve (had) four or five stops since then, so there wasn’t any per­son­al reac­tion from my stand­point because of me being an alum­ni out there.”

Yeah, but it felt per­son­al. The Buffs explod­ed for 525 yards of total offense, forced three fum­bles, and had the favored Bru­ins throw­ing off their metaphor­i­cal back foot from the first play of the con­test. CU amassed 261 yards through the air with a quar­ter­back who was toil­ing in the sec­ondary at this time in 2019.

“He was a safe­ty a year ago,” Dor­rell said with a laugh when asked about senior Sam Noy­er, one of the rare moments of postgame lev­i­ty with the scribes. “Can you believe that?”

It’s 2020, coach. We’ll believe anything.

Espe­cial­ly after this one. No K.D. Nixon as a safe­ty valve at wide­out? No wor­ries — there’s Dim­itri Stan­ley (66 receiv­ing yards) and tight end Brady Rus­sell (77 receiv­ing yards, one score). No Alex Fontenot to car­ry the load at tail­back? There’s Jarek Brous­sard, rush­ing for 187 yards and three touch­downs on 31 carries.

“We knew com­ing in (that) against a third-year start­ing quar­ter­back that they had,” Dor­rell said, refer­ring to NFL prospect Dori­an Thomp­son-Robin­son, “that we would have to put some points on the board.”

There were hic­cups, too. The three missed field goals, two of them blocked, might’ve proven fatal against a team that wasn’t coached by Chip Kelly.

And remov­ing Noy­er in the sec­ond quar­ter made no sense, oth­er than keep­ing an old promise to the 1B guy in the Buffs’ quar­ter­back der­by. Dor­rell had said last week that both sig­nal-callers would play, but that was before his 1A guy com­plet­ed nine of his first 10 throws, three to Stan­ley, and had CU cruis­ing to a 21–7 lead.

Kick­ing on 4th-and‑1 at the UCLA 22 with 11:36 to go in the third? It won’t go down as his finest moment.

Espe­cial­ly as Noy­er warmed up while the temps cooled, con­nect­ing on 13 of his first 19. For quar­ter­back turned safe­ty turned quar­ter­back again, No. 4 sure as heck didn’t look like a guy who hadn’t thrown a pass in a col­lege game for two years. (The Ore­gon native com­plet­ed 4‑of‑6 in mop-up duty in the snow on Nov. 18, 2018 against Utah.)

They’d piled up 45 points and 445 yards of offense by the end of the third quar­ter with Nixon in street clothes. If that says some­thing about Kel­ly, it says some­thing about offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Dar­rin Chi­averi­ni, too. And his offen­sive line.

At the out­set, they looked large­ly as we left them last Novem­ber. Salty in the trench­es, swarm­ing at the point of attack, the hall­marks of a defense that grew up so much over the course of 2019 that it was match­ing Wash­ing­ton and Stan­ford punch-for-punch.

They wast­ed no time swing­ing Sat­ur­day. Der­rion Rakestraw’s strip on UCLA’s first punt return of the night got scooped by team­mate Alec Pell and set up the first of two short fields to open the con­test. The Buffs’ 14–0 lead after the first eight min­utes set the stage for a per­fect ambush.

And sweet irony, too, giv­en that vic­to­ry No. 1 for the Buffs’ new foot­ball coach had come against his alma mater, against the last school to charge him with lead­ing a col­le­giate program.

There’s going to be some revi­sion­ist his­to­ry after this one. Dor­rell wasn’t ter­ri­ble at UCLA. He just wasn’t Pete Car­roll, at a time when Pete Car­roll was the talk of the nation.

The bar is low­er here. Espe­cial­ly this sea­son, giv­en zero expec­ta­tions and nine months of logis­ti­cal hur­dles. A late hire. A glob­al pan­dem­ic. No spring ball. No sum­mer camps. No Steven Mon­tez. No Laviska Shenault. A fall sea­son tak­en off the table, then tossed back on again.

“We’re going to be play­ing UCLA every year. We’re in the South divi­sion,” Dor­rell said. “So it’s all about tak­ing care of busi­ness, tak­ing care of the things that are right in front of you and going on to the next one. The next one is Stan­ford and we’ve got to get ready for that one.”

As first impres­sions go, Dor­rell didn’t have to say any­thing. The score­board screamed. For miles.