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BOULDER, Colo. – The field goal attempt swung to the right of the goal post and kept Colorado’s comeback attempt afloat, at least for a while.
The sideline bled onto the field. Defensive coordinator Charles Kelly pumped his fist and slammed a couple of players’ helmets in a spirited attack as the players walked back to the sidelines.
Deion Sanders was alone, 50 feet from the fight in his black hoodie with “COLORADO” written in black font over a white bar on his chest, black Colorado hat, and sunglasses.
He was busy talking to the coaches in the booth, his back turned to the celebration taking place on the field.
Next moment, next play.
Sanders’ fringe stoicism has become one of his trademarks, in stark contrast to some of his training partners who can often turn into red-faced, vein-necked lunatics on the sidelines before morphing into cliché factories with a microphone in their faces.
For lack of a better term, Sanders is boring on the sidelines and, as he has been throughout his career, has nothing to do with a camera and microphone collecting his thoughts.
Sanders’ balanced approach will be needed after his team failed to dig itself out of a 27-point hole in a 48-41 loss Saturday to No. 8 USC. Colorado trailed 34-14 after two quarters.
“We challenged them tremendously at halftime. “Everyone says they want the light until they want the light,” Sanders said. “The thing about light is that it echoes your imperfections.”
.@DeionSanders on the Buffs’ resilience today.#GoBuffs pic.twitter.com/eXKzr5PQUX
– Colorado Buffaloes Football (@CUBuffsFootball) September 30, 2023
Colorado’s imperfections, in the secondary and on the offensive line, have been on display the past two Saturdays, including in a 42-6 loss to No. 10 Oregon.
What did the near comeback against USC mean?
“Nothing,” said quarterback Shedeur Sanders, who threw for 371 yards and four touchdowns and ran for 50 yards and another score while constantly being harassed in the pocket. “We just lost. Just because it’s a big team doesn’t mean we bow down and it’s time to shut us down now. A loss is a loss.”
After facing two top-10 opponents in a row (being outscored 69-14 combined in the first halves), this team’s toughest test could still be ahead.
Their roster added 57 players after spring practice and 69 new scholarship players in total. Camaraderie doesn’t happen overnight.
And all offseason, the Buffaloes have preached the belief. He’s on his team’s team. Constantly coming out of Deion Sanders’ mouth is: Believe.
Believe in what exactly?
“The championship is our goal. That’s what we want to achieve in our first year, no matter what,” defensive lineman Shane Cokes told me in August at the team’s media day in Boulder. “We’re all working together to achieve that common goal, and it comes from the top down, with Coach Prime’s idea of winning that championship in mind. It is not a year of recovery, go 6-6.”
For realists (Sanders might loudly call them non-believers) 6-6 should be enough for Sanders to earn legitimate Pac-12 or national coach of the year consideration. By any measure, 2023 would be considered a success for a program that went 1-11 last season. Las Vegas bettors thought the Buffs would win three or four games.
But this is still the same program with a giant photo of the national title trophy hanging in the team room. This template dreamed big. Saturday’s loss almost officially takes that goal off the table, no matter what issues the Buffaloes take care of on the field. The same is almost certainly true of earning a ticket to Las Vegas to play for a Pac-12 title in his final season in the league. No matter how many people thought the idea was ridiculous at the start of the season, Colorado’s locker room certainly believed it was possible. Now the Buffs are 3-2 and are far from their first winning streak over TCU, Nebraska and Colorado State that captured the attention of the sports world.
Sanders, 56, who spent 20 years playing college and professional football and coached high school and college football for the past 10 years, is experienced and sensible enough to know that when a goal leaves the scoreboard vision, the only option is to continue working and investing in the same way you did when that goal was still possible.
“We have to believe no matter what,” Sanders said.
Is your equipment connected the same way?
“I knew what they had inside. All they had to do is believe,” she said. “Regardless of the color of the opposing team’s uniforms, they just have to believe. And that’s something they’re doing week after week. Is growing.”
Sanders’ task ahead is to ensure that his squad, assembled in just a few months and made up of players who have mostly known each other for just as long, also understands and embraces that idea.
“Today, we get a glimpse of who our identity is when we play good football, and we haven’t really proven that since Week 1,” Shedeur Sanders said.
On Saturday, the Colorado bench might as well have been covered in red carpet. Rapper DaBaby gave a pep talk to the team, led them on the field and jumped into the student section to pump up the crowd. Rappers Lecrae and Tobe Nwigwe roamed the sidelines along with a handful of Denver Nuggets players and former Boston Celtics players Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Da’Vinchi of “All American” and Storm Reid of HBO’s “Euphoria” also had lateral passes.
LeBron James and his son Bronny, who plays basketball at USC, were rumored to be planning to attend, but they didn’t show up.
Colorado drew a school-record 892 media members for Saturday’s game, even more than the 848 when the Buffaloes hosted Nebraska in the home opener.
Colorado, as a spectacle this season, almost certainly peaked in the last two weeks. A simpler schedule lies ahead, but it also means The Rock probably won’t give the Buffs another pregame speech.
The Buffs have essentially been the most watched team in America every week this season. The attention will continue to increase, but after suffering two convincing defeats and with blue blood opponents behind them, the spotlight will not be as bright. We’ve probably last seen 10 million people seeing Colorado in 2023.
That increases the difficulty of keeping the roster fully invested and playing at its full potential, a task that was already going to be more difficult for Deion Sanders than any other coach in the country who has spent more than nine months training 90 percent of his team. template. .
“Everybody has problems. Everyone has new players. There are no excuses,” Shedeur Sanders said. “It’s up to us individually to come together collectively as a team.”
And as Colorado’s schedule relaxes a bit, that means the expectations will come as well. Sanders’ team has been big underdogs in three games this season and won once. He was a close favorite before hosting Nebraska, now 2-3. But in the only game in which he was a heavy favorite, against Colorado State, Colorado fell behind by double digits late and needed fourth-quarter heroics and two overtimes to escape with a victory.
With opponents like Arizona State (1-4) and Stanford (1-3) ahead in the next two weeks, the Buffaloes will face similar expectations that were rarely present during their flashy five-week introduction to the United States.
The best news for Colorado is that Travis Hunter, arguably the best player on the roster, should return soon from a liver laceration he suffered in the win over Colorado State. The Buffaloes were without him for both losses, and while it’s unlikely he would have affected the outcome in either of them, he adds a dimension of speed missing from the offense and gives the defense back its best defensive back. Safety Shilo Sanders also missed Saturday’s game with a kidney injury, suffered in last week’s loss to Oregon.
All week, Deion Sanders preached responsibility, honesty and being the same no matter the record or the score.
In the coming weeks, as the Colorado supernova cools and the grind begins, we’ll know if its team absorbed its message.
(Photo: Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)