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Hollywood, Calif. • Colorado University football coach Mike MacIntyre knows the doubts will be plentiful. His team goes into a season as defending Pac-12 South champion for the first time, but it will still carry a collective chip on its shoulder and a "prove it" mentality.
The Buffaloes went 10-4 overall and 8-1 in Pac-12 play last season. Their lone regular-season conference loss came in a four-point game at USC, and they were later routed 41-10 by Washington in the conference championship game.
The Buffaloes were picked to finish fourth in the Pac-12 South in the preseason medial poll released Wednesday morning prior to the start of Pac-12 Media Days at the Hollywood & Highland Entertainment Center. USC, Utah and UCLA were selected ahead of the Buffaloes.
"We're a still a team that people don't believe in," McIntyre said. "We would like for people to believe in us. The only way you do that is to put back-to-back-to-back things together. That's what we plan on doing. What we want to do is be in the Pac-12 championship game and not get out brains beat in like we did last year against Washington. We'd like to finish it better."
The 2016 Buffaloes squad featured 23 scholarship seniors. Just three defensive starters return, and they'll break in a new defensive coordinator in D.J. Eliot. The offense will be under the guidance of sophomore Steven Montez with the program's all-time leading passer, Sefo Liufau, now gone.
MacIntyre described the task at hand as reloading opposed to rebuilding. He also said many players were redshirted throughout his tenure, asserting his belief that you win with an older team.
"It's all about players," MacIntyre said. "Players make plays. Players win games. We just coach. When they get out between the lines, the players set the standard. They set the culture. We preach it to them. We believe in it. We want them to trust us, but they have to buy in. These guys have bought in."
Including three players who were regularly on the field last season though not in starting roles, McIntyre considers his defense as having six returning starters. He also points out that despite a new coordinator on defense, the system will remain the exact same — a system to which they've tailored their recruiting.
Last season's defense ranked among the top 20 in NCAA Division I in passing defense (20th), total defense (19th), third-down efficiency defense (14th) and scoring defense (20th).
"The biggest thing is the leadership on the team," senior outside linebacker and two-time captain Derek McCartney said of duplicating last year's success. "There's a lot of guys who have been through the fire, who have been through the tough times, who have been through the good times. We're going to have to bring the young guys with us."
Offensively, Montez posted a 2-1 record as a starter last year as a redshirt freshman, and he completed 60.3 percent of his throws as he passed for 1,017 yards and nine touchdowns (four interceptions) for the season. Oregon State coach Gary Andersen said of Montez, "Last year he was a very good quarterback in this league."
Running back Phillip Lindsay will enter this season ranked third in the program history in all-purpose yards, and he'll have have an offensive line with four starters back opening up holes. He rushed for 1,189 yards and 16 touchdowns last season.
"I don't look at that stuff, and a lot of our team don't look at it because it really doesn't matter," Lindsay said of the preseason poll. "That's why it's called preseason polls. Because you've got to play the football game to find out what it's about! If that's the case [believing the polls] we wouldn't play … We were picked what, last, last year? Does it matter? No. We were in the Pac-12 championship. That's where we want to go again."
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