Julian Lewis starts opener, heads home to face Georgia Tech
Julian Lewis makes his first career start about an hour from his Georgia hometown, and Colorado gets a shot at revenge on the team that beat it 27-20 in last year's opener.
Julian Lewis heads home to Georgia for his first start — and a shot at revenge
There was never much of a competition to watch this fall — Julian Lewis is Colorado's starter for Thursday's opener, and last year's tape explains why the job is his. As a true freshman he completed 52 of 94 passes for 589 yards, 4 touchdowns and zero interceptions across 4 appearances, headlined by a 299-yard first start that ranks second among true freshmen in program history behind only Koy Detmer's 1992 outing. A Big 12 coach set to face Lewis this season told Bleacher Report he's "super talented," and called new coordinator Brennan Marion's offense — the one Lewis debuts against Georgia Tech — "unconventional in a lot of ways."
What makes Thursday different is where it's played, and who it's against. Bobby Dodd Stadium sits about an hour from Carrollton, the Georgia high school where Lewis was a four-star recruit before he flipped away from a USC commitment to sign with Sanders, per Yahoo Sports — a homecoming before it's anything else. It also doubles as a rematch: Georgia Tech beat Colorado 27-20 in last year's season opener, with Haynes King the deciding factor, according to DNVR Sports. King is gone now, but Sanders hasn't let go of the result. "It was a tremendous battle last season and they had a quarterback who refused to lose," Sanders said this week, per DNVR Sports. "I want to flip it on them. I really do."
Yellow Jackets defensive lineman Brayden Manley told reporters at his own team's presser he's "going for two [sacks]" against the freshman, per Essentially Sports, and Georgia Tech backs up the talk with real turnover of its own: it starts redshirt Alberto Mendoza, who has thrown all of 27 college passes, and now leans on Michigan transfer Justice Haynes, who ran for 857 yards and 10 touchdowns in 7 games last season and anchors a ground game built around three tailbacks and four tight ends, per DNVR Sports. Colorado co-defensive coordinator Chris Marve held this same Georgia Tech offense to 6 points while running Virginia Tech's defense in 2024, and rattling a first-time starter is the fastest way to make Sanders' revenge line come true. Sanders sounds unmoved about the personal stakes, saying he has "no nostalgia" for the trip, and noting his fallback if Lewis needs a series off is Isaac Wilson, a transfer who has actually started games at the college level, at Utah.
Last season closed on a four-game slide
Colorado's 2025 season ran out of road the same way it started to slip in October — Utah routed the Buffs 53-7, Arizona followed with a 52-17 win in Boulder, and West Virginia beat them 29-22 on the road. Arizona State piled on 42-17 at Folsom Field before last season closed on November 29 with a 24-14 loss at Kansas State, finishing on a four-game skid and putting a hard stop on what had been a promising start under Deion Sanders.
None of that is current form — it's last season, and it belongs here only because it's the last time this program actually played a game. What it does explain is why the roster looks different heading to Atlanta: Ezra Christensen is one of several new faces brought in over the winter to try to fix what broke down in November, and Thursday's opener will be the first real test of whether it worked.
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Ezra Christensen's path to Boulder was never a normal one. He grew up in an orphanage in Sierra Leone, was adopted at 16 with no knowledge of American football or the NCAA rulebook, and lost his senior year of high school to the pandemic. He started college at San Diego Mesa, a junior college, in 2022, before two seasons at Fresno State and a 2025 stop at New Mexico State, where he made first-team All-CUSA with 11 tackles for loss and six sacks — numbers that led all FBS defensive linemen in total quarterback hurries (28) and ranked third among interior linemen in Pro Football Focus grading. He arrived at Colorado this offseason still needing the NCAA to grant him a fifth year to play.
That fight got harder this week. A Boulder County district court judge denied Christensen's motion for a preliminary injunction, according to DNVR Sports and On3, leaving him ineligible for the fall as things stand. His attorney, Darren Heitner, who has beaten the NCAA in court before, told 247Sports the team is looking into filing an emergency motion for reconsideration — a motion that, as of this week, is still pending rather than filed. It's a separate case from the broader Colorado ruling that already unlocked fifth years for players like Florida's Denzel Aberdeen and USF's Traevon Mitchell this summer, but for now it leaves one of Colorado's best returning pass-rushers on the outside looking in for the opener.
The market has this one closer than last year's result was
The line opened with Georgia Tech favored by 6.5 points for tonight's rematch, and the total was set at 50.5 — a middling number for a Brennan Marion "Go-Go" offense making its debut, and not exactly a shootout price either. For a home favorite that has lost its starting quarterback and both coordinators since last beating Colorado, a single-score line says the market isn't fully sold that Mendoza and a rebuilt staff are safely ahead of a talented but unproven Lewis.
Win or lose in Atlanta, Colorado is back at Folsom Field on September 12 vs. Weber State, which opened its own season 1-0 after outlasting Northern Colorado 30-29. That one won't carry a line worth printing until it gets closer, but it's the next chance for Buffs fans to see Lewis at home in front of the crowd he'll be playing for all fall.