In the early 1990s, Kurt Roper was a player at Rice University, sitting in a meeting with his fellow quarterbacks and feeling lost as he listened to offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger.
“He was going over defensive football and I’m going, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about and this is over my head,'” Roper recalled recently. “As a player, I really didn’t take the initiative to learn it.”
A quarter century later, Roper is trying to teach the quarterbacks at Colorado what he wished he had learned as a player.
Entering his first season as CU’s quarterbacks coach, Roper, who was hired in January, is already making a big impact on the Buffs. It’s been well documented that starting quarterback Steven Montez has “gone from algebra to calculus” in his knowledge of the game, but Montez isn’t the only quarterback benefitting from Roper’s tutelage.
“In the last few months I’ve learned more than I’ve ever learned in my whole entire life,” sophomore Sam Noyer said. “Not taking away from any coaches that I’ve had in the past. They’ve all prepared me really well up to this point, but (Roper) has come in and he’s taken it to that next level, for sure.”
While CU hopes Montez, in his second year as the starter, takes his game to a new level and leads the Buffs back to the postseason, his top backups — Noyer and Lytle — are growing, as well. Both said their biggest improvement has come between the ears.
Read the full story at Buffzone.com.
