Brooks: Another Comeback Complete, Liufau Returns In Buffs Win
October 15, 2016 | Football, B.G. Brooks
Senior QB sharp after missing three games with ankle injury
BOULDER – WTF? Not for this team. Try W.T.T.F.
It is printed in bold, black, block letters on the front of T-shirts made fashionable by the Colorado Buffaloes this season, one in which the Buffs are validating themselves almost weekly to the college football world.
W.T.T.F stands for Welcome To The Fight, and if anyone on this team knows anything about waking up each morning ready to battle, ready to take on the day's challenges, it is Sefo Liufau.
The luckiest among college football players remain injury free and aren't confronted with comebacks. Not that he's unlucky – he will tell you he's blessed beyond his wildest expectations – but Liufau already has made two comebacks this season.
The first was the big one, successfully returning from last winter's Lisfranc surgery and being able to open August camp with his teammates. The second wasn't of that magnitude, but neither can you call it minor.
In fact, Liufau went the other way in describing it. "It was harder than when I broke my left foot because of the fact that it was during the season," he admitted late Saturday night. "You never know with all of the injuries that have happened on my right side. You don't know how long it's going to be."
To recap, in the second half of CU's 45-28 loss at Michigan on Sept. 17, Liufau left with an ankle injury. He didn't play again for nearly a month, watching for three games while understudy Steven Montez filled in capably and guided the Buffs to two wins.
But anyone with knowledge of the Buffs and what this season means to them also knows what Liufau means to the Buffs.
"He's the man," said running back Phillip Lindsay. "That man has been through a lot now . . . a lot of criticism, people loving him, people hating him. But at the end of the day he gets up every time, leads his men down the field no matter what. I love Sefo."
"On and off the field, whether he's playing or not, he's a leader of the team," said running back Kyle Evans.
"Having him back on the field is having another leader back on the field," added receiver Bryce Bobo. "He takes charge."
And that's what Liufau did on a moonlit Saturday night at Folsom Field, where his second comeback of 2016 played a significant role in CU's first-ever victory against Arizona State. Beaten by the Sun Devils in seven previous games – with some of the losses nasty – Sefo and the Buffs started fast, stayed fast and finished strong.
CU 40, ASU 16.
Showing no effects of the right ankle injury (the Lisfranc injury was to his left) that shelved him for the three previous games, Liufau completed 23 of his 31 pass attempts for 265 yards and rushed 14 times for 38 yards and a 3-yard touchdown.
He completed his first nine passes, three of them on an opening drive that covered 81 yards and put CU up 7-0. That 10-play march must have been a blur for ASU coach Todd Graham, who said, "Their tempo was fast, our guys struggled getting lined up. We've been here before with the altitude (but) some guys had some issues there.
"That's part of it, and they just blocked our butt. I don't think anyone's done that. It wasn't real complex."
But as good as Liufau was in taking charge and getting his offense back to the line of scrimmage pronto, he was even better in recognizing where the Sun Devils' multitude of blitzes were coming from and taking the Buffs in another direction.
"They blitz a lot and as long as you're running away from the blitz you can gash them," said Evans, who carried 11 times for 61 yards and a TD and caught one of Liufau's passes for 32 yards. "We just got our blocks right and happened to gash them on a couple of plays. It turned out good for us."
CU coach Mike MacIntyre said Liufau "did a phenomenal job, he got us started off well. The majority of his checks, his reads, he was excellent with. He kept us moving (and) he was moving around well and felt very, very comfortable out there playing. In the games he's played this year he's played really well, I mean really well. He'll keep that up."
Liufau is known among his coaches and teammates to be his own biggest critic, and MacIntyre said only in half jest that "he'll find something (in his performance) he didn't do right of course."
It might be overthrowing Evans in the left flat on third down, but that was one of Liufau's few misfires. His first incompletion was a drop by tight end Dylan Keeney on a middle route, and on the next play Bobo bobbled a ball that resulted in another incompletion.
But on the next play – third-and-10 at the CU 44 – the nonplussed Liufau teamed with Devin Ross for a 15-yard pass-and-catch to keep what would be a 56-yard scoring drive intact. Lindsay scored the first of his three TDs, giving the Buffs a 23-10 lead. They mostly kept the accelerator down from there on.
In his first three seasons, when Liufau attempted 30-plus passes in a game, an interception (or two) usually was a given. No more. He's matured in the offense, learned to play within himself and finally has the right amount of playmakers surrounding him.
On Saturday night he extended his current streak of passes without a pick to 123 – the third-longest streak in CU history. Plus, he's now the first CU player to have three 100-plus pick-free streaks. His 300-yard total offense game vs. ASU (265 passing, 38 rushing) was the 11th of his career.
Those are nice numbers but Sefo and the Buffs want more – and Saturday night was as much a milestone for the CU program as it was for Liufau. Sitting out three games in a season he'd worked so hard to be ready for was "tough and frustrating."
Coming back against ASU, a team that beat Liufau's first CU team 54-13 (2013 in Tempe), was akin to "coming full circle," he said. "The first time my class played ASU we got destroyed by them. Senior year, to beat these guys and put a good win on the board is great."
W.T.T.F. – and Sefo Liufau knows a thing or two about fighting the good fight. Been there, done that, still doing it.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
