Welcome back to the finest audio source of Colorado Buffaloes news and notes really found anywhere, as we continue our position by position preview series for 2026. We’re going through who’s there, who’s gone, who’s coaching those positions, and whether the group is going to help CU win games, whether we have concerns, or whether it’s just acceptable enough to keep CU in it at the end. We’ll also talk about players we’re excited about and players we’re sad to see leave.

Today’s group might be the toughest one on the calendar to talk about. We genuinely tried to come up with a fancy title for this preview and just couldn’t get there, and maybe that’s the most tight end thing we could do, honestly. File not found. Name not found.

Who’s Gone

This is a group that has been historically very underutilized in the Deion Sanders, Coach Prime era of Colorado Buffaloes football. If you asked former offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur any question about a tight end, he’d probably say, “What’s that?” He didn’t know what to do with tight ends in this offense. We could count on one hand the amount of two tight end sets we’ve seen this offense run in the last four years.

There wasn’t a lot of movement on the transfer portal with this group. CU loses Sav’ell Smalls to graduation. Goodbye, Sav’ell Smalls, that was an exciting two to three years. We really liked him, and we liked him in the offense. He was fun.

Who’s Back

Zach Atkins was the big guy last year and will be the starter again this year. He has some giddy up, and he has some ability in the receiving game. Zach Atkins had the fifth most catches on the team last year, which is a pretty big improvement over 2024. That’s a good season for him given how involved they let him get in the game, it’s not a testament that he wasn’t super involved, it’s more a testament to some flaws in the offensive scheme. Personnel wise, this group was treated as not that important in recruiting, there was a pretty clear non emphasis on bringing in tight ends. We don’t know if that’s changed this year, though it does sound like they’re really happy with what they have in Zach Atkins.

Corbin Laisure played a little bit last year and is an exciting freshman tight end prospect. There’s also Zane D’Souza, a local guy at tight end. If either of them actually pop, that’d be great.

New Arrivals

Fisher Clements is the big addition, a graduate transfer who comes up from Northern Colorado. He’s pretty big, 6 foot 8. We’ll likely see him utilized mostly as a blocker. 

Coaching and Scheme

This is where the outlook actually gets a little more interesting. In the Brennan Marion go go offense, tight ends play a big role. Historically he’s done a lot with two tight end sets, which is a big change from what CU has run. There is reason to say the tight end will be more involved this year, because they generally are pretty involved when the go go offense is doing its thing.

Look back at 2024 UNLV, which was a weird year, the start of the NIL era with Matt Sluka holding out for money. On that team, a tight end, Keleo Ballungay was the third highest receiver. These guys are going to be asked to do a lot of stuff in the short passing game, get pulled, and do a lot of run blocking. Less clear how much pass blocking they’ll be asked to do, but we’ll see. A lot of question marks, a lot of mysteries. It’s honestly hard to fill ten minutes talking about this tight end group, but what can you do at the end of the day.

Position Group Verdict

Acceptable. Not concerned, but we wouldn’t say the group is a strength of the team either, we don’t think they’re going to lose CU a game. They’ll have a defined role, and that’s as positive as we’re going to get here. Hopefully they thrive in a lot of third and fives in this go go offense.

Player to Watch

Zach Atkins, clearly. He’s the returning starter with real giddy up and receiving ability, and he’s coming off finishing fifth on the team in catches a year ago.