Pat McAfee Hits Deion Sanders, Colorado With Stern Reality Check

The Colorado Buffaloes and head coach Deion Sanders have been accused at times of believing their own hype.

Following a 31-26 season-opening win over North Dakota State, Colorado talked a big game heading into last week’s 28-10 loss to Nebraska, and the team seemed to fold once it came up against some adversity.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders threw his offensive line under the bus for their inability to keep him from being pressured, and he did the same with his run game, stating the Buffaloes weren’t going to hand it off because they didn’t have anyone who could gain yards out of the backfield.

Now, as CU heads into its Week 3 matchup with Colorado State — a team it barely beat last year in double overtime — some are questioning if the Buffaloes are in a good head space coming off the previous week’s disappointing defeat, including ESPN’s Pat McAfee.

“This has been an interesting little tale here at Colorado,” McAfee said Saturday on “College GameDay.” “I think he does have the ability to lead, I think he does have the ability to coach, but their team-building and culture-building has not really worked out thus far. … I think [Colorado has] enough good players to be a great team, but nobody believes that they’re a good team at this point, they think they just have superstars.”

McAfee’s remarks are pretty spot on.

Sanders was supposed to bring Colorado back to national relevance. He locked up some of the top recruits in the country the last two years and rebuilt nearly his entire roster through the transfer portal, but Colorado is no closer to being a powerhouse program than it was before Sanders’ arrival.

Though Sanders had a fruitful three-year run at Jackson State — he went 27-6 and won two SWAC Coach of the Year awards — that success hasn’t translated to his time at Colorado.

In a season-plus, the Buffaloes are just 5-9 under Sanders, and he his signature win was a season-opening victory over then-No. 17-ranked TCU. However, that TCU team finished 5-7 and started the season ranked courtesy of its national championship game appearance the year before.