Keeler: Brendon Lewis? Broken. Karl Dorrell’s coaching staff? Broken. Offensive line? Broken. Folsom Field? Broken. Time for CU Buffs to blow it up and start over.

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BOULDER — The loudest cheer from the student section came early into halftime, when a Buffs fan wearing gold-and-black overalls and not much else came charging out of the undergraduate throng and onto Folsom Field.

Skippy McOveralls ran untouched into the north end zone before security corralled him out of bounds.

It was the closest anybody wearing CU colors got to breaking the plane all stinking day.

“Offensively, we’re struggling in a number of areas,” Buffs coach Karl Dorrell said after his era hit a new nadir Saturday in a 30-0 loss to Minnesota, the program’s first shutout home loss in nearly 10 years.

“And it’s not just the quarterback. It’s protection, it’s the run game, it’s receivers, it’s backs, it’s everything. It’s one of those things right now (where) we’re going to have to wipe the slate clean and start all over and try to figure out how to do some semblance of offense and how to get some things back going.”

The defense is gassed. The passing game is painful. The Buffs’ leading rusher on Saturday was the backup quarterback, freshman Drew Carter. Nine yards. Two carries. If you want a stat to sum up the day, start there. The rest, cover your eyes.

The Buffs (1-2) play like strangers, which is what happens when your head coach doesn’t trust your offensive coordinator, your offensive coordinator doesn’t trust his quarterback, your wideouts don’t trust their quarterback, your quarterback no longer trusts his offensive line, and your linebackers can’t trust anybody. A two-score deficit feels like five right now.

“You’ve just got to look at yourself in the mirror, as a man,” junior defensive stopper Carson Wells said. “And you’ve got to physically come back (Sunday) with a better mindset and get ready to work again.”

CU’s offense? Whatever this is, it ain’t working.

Blow it up. Start over. The Gophers (2-1), buoyed by a breakfast pep talk by alum and former Broncos linebacker Karl Mecklenburg, are better than they looked at home against Miami of Ohio. Not this much better.

Ohio State shredded the Gophs for 495 yards in the Twin Cities in the opener for both programs. Miami’s RedHawks followed that up with 341 yards on Minny in Week 2, 237 through the air.

The Buffs managed 7 net yards at the break. On 25 plays. They collected 56 more yards the rest of the way.

Over its last eight quarters, against a good defense (Texas A&M) and an OK defense (Minnesota), CU has run 108 plays for 323 yards — 2.99 yards per snap — and scored seven points.

“As the head coach, I have to look at everything,” Dorrell said.

Including the mirror. It’s not just them, Coach. It’s you. It’s all of you.

Freshman Brendon Lewis might be the quarterback of the future, but the present looks unsightly. His windup is slow and deliberate, his eyes usually locked and fixed on the target. It’s a credit to the kid that he’s only been picked off once through three games, but every snap feels like a giant roll of the dice.

And we’ve heard all the arguments, why this staff is hellbent on trying to turn a running quarterback into a passer. Brenden Rice, Dimitri Stanley and Daniel Arias are allegedly too good to waste as blockers or decoys? Maybe.

The Buffs are a Lewis hamstring pull away from trotting out Carter at quarterback against Power 5 defenses? That didn’t stop the coaching staff from chucking the teen into the mix after the score was 23-0.

And that’s where you feel the vacuum of JT Shrout’s shredded knee and Sam Noyer taking the transfer portal express to Oregon State. And again, we get it: The more you use Lewis’ best weapon, his legs, the more risk you take that one or both of those legs wind up mangled.

Mind you, that’s assuming this offensive line doesn’t get him flattened first.

“That was a complete beatdown,” Dorrell said. “In every phase.”

UNC was the warm-up. Texas A&M was the reach. Only the football gods handed the Buffs a gift at Empower Field, a backup quarterback who wasn’t remotely prepared for the circumstances. The Aggies escaped anyway.

But this one, against the Gophers, was supposed to be the first fair barometer for where this roster really was. A pair of bowl-hopeful middleweights trading punches for the lunchtime crowd.

After watching Minnesota land haymaker after haymaker, after watching the Buffs crawl across the canvas, what does that say about CU now?

“Great football team, a physical football team,” Gophers linebacker Mariano Sori-Marin said of the Buffs. “(CU’s) quarterback is phenomenal. He can move in space. We talked about containing (Lewis) all week. And we did that. So that took away a little bit of (their) game plan.”

They took away a little bit of the stadium, too. A few minutes after the final gun, a pile of Gophers fans leaned across the support railing in Section 103 of Folsom Field to offer handshakes and high-fives to the victors  — only for that railing to give way and collapse onto field level.

Fortunately, the drop was only about two feet and no one was hurt. Those Gophers broke darn near everything here Saturday, didn’t they? First, spirits. Then, fencing.

“That (was) exciting to see,” Sori-Marin said with a grin as he stood outside the visiting locker room, nodding to the damage. “But I hope Colorado can get that fixed.”

So do we. Because that’s not the only thing around here that needs fixing these days, champ. Not by a long shot.

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