BOULDER — Brandon Davis-Swain had been manifesting it since the spring.

While many Colorado fans may have been surprised to see the redshirt freshman start the first two games at defensive tackle, especially in a room loaded with veterans, the guy Davis-Swain was starting alongside, senior Anquin Barnes, expected it.

“I’m gonna be playing next to you,” Barnes recalled Davis-Swain telling him back in the spring. “I said, ‘Bet, bro.’ Ever since then, we’ve been pushing each other, and he made it happen. I wasn’t really surprised. He’s been working.”

Among the top eight interior defensive linemen on the Buffaloes roster, all but two are in their fourth year or more in college. Yet, Davis-Swain, a Detroit native who appeared in two games in 2024, emerged among the pack throughout the offseason.

“He’s super consistent,” CU defensive line coach Domata Peko said. “That’s what this game’s about. It’s about doing your job, owning your gap and throughout camp, I don’t think I could count on my hands how many times he was out of his gap. He has really good gap integrity. True pro. Really enjoy the kid and excited for him. He’s been doing his job, and that’s why he earned the spot is just being super consistent with what he’s done every day.”

It started with Davis-Swain getting his body right. He came to Boulder as someone who played both on the interior and on the edge of the defensive line at West Bloomfield High School in Michigan. He was listed at 260 pounds ahead of his first season with the Buffs. A year later? He’s up to 290 pounds.

“First of all, he had to get his body together,” coach Deion Sanders said. “He wasn’t serious about it last year, he was just a kid coming out of high school and thinking it was fun. It ain’t fun when you’re not playing, it ain’t fun when you’re not dominating on the field. He’s really paying attention to details and he works his butt off.”

Davis-Swain has just one tackle and one quarterback hurry through the first two games of 2025, but he was part of a massive week-to-week turnaround for the Buffs defense as a whole. 

After allowing 320 rushing yards in the loss to Georgia Tech in the season opener, CU allowed just 80 in the 31-7 win over Delaware this past weekend at Folsom Field.

“The first game was a tough one,” Peko said. “They had way too many yards for my liking, but it’s a tough first game when you play someone like Georgia Tech.

“The challenge was set by Coach (Prime). We can’t have anybody rushing for over 100 (yards) on us. Our guys are getting better. This has been our best week of practice. The guys are really coming together and taking pride in the run. They have meetings on their own now. They really took that run game to heart and whenever we stop the run… we’re gonna win those games.”

That will likely be the case Friday in the Big 12 opener at Houston. While the Buffs have plenty of respect for Cougars quarterback Conner Weigman, a Texas A&M transfer and former five-star recruit, they know Houston will have seen the film from Week 1 and want to use their talented running back Dean Connors (182 rushing yards and two touchdowns so far this season) to attack the heart of the CU defense.

“We just gotta dominate the line of scrimmage. That’s what it comes (down) to every game, it’s dominating our guy, winning our one-on-ones,” Peko said. “We’re starting to get the run down now. The standard is set now. We just gotta go out, put hands on people, make sure we maintain our gap leverages and we’ll be alright.”