Former CU Buffs starting QB calls out Prime’s “coaching”

Ryan Staub didn’t have many anything positive things to say about the CU Buffs coaching staff in a viral clip on Wednesday.

“In my three years of playing college football, I haven’t had as much coaching as I’ve had in the first month that I’ve been here,” Staub told reporters Tuesday in Knoxville. “It’s a lot of special coaching. I haven’t been coached this much. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can and improve.”

Three years. One month. Pretty wild.

Staub served as Shedeur Sanders’ primary backup for two years but got multiple starts in place of the draft-focused coach’s son during his time and after when the Colorado Buffaloes were searching for an answer under center. He is now competing for Tennessee’s starting quarterback job — and he’s making it clear that his development in Boulder was, at best, an afterthought. While Staub was diplomatic enough to avoid directly torching Deion Sanders, the implication is damning: Colorado’s coaching staff didn’t actually coach him.

Over 12 games he threw 99 passes for 53 completions, which went for 681 yards and four touchdowns to four interceptions.

This isn’t entirely surprising. Prime’s operation has always been heavy on branding, light on depth chart development. When your starting quarterback is your son and a future NFL draft pick, everyone else becomes a prop in the content machine. Staub got the “Martin Luther Staub” nickname and the Rudy comparisons after his breakout game against Delaware, but what he didn’t get was genuine investment in his future. Not Prime, nor his much-maligned offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur — who was part of a coup to steal the job from Sean Lewis, only to get axed a few years too late after being awful at generally everything.

Shurmur’s scheme at Colorado was “simplified,” according to Staub, designed so quarterbacks could “not think.” Tennessee’s system is “complex,” and Staub sees direct correlation between that complexity and the program’s success.

Colorado has since replaced Shurmur with Brennan Marion, and Staub with Julian Lewis. The Marion add was a tacit admission that the offensive approach needed an overhaul. But for Staub, the change came too late. He’s in Knoxville now, finally learning what real quarterback development looks like. And Lewis took over midway through the fall and now it’s his gig.

The organizational criticism cuts deeper. Staub described Tennessee as “buttoned-up,” “organized,” and “professional” — qualifiers that, by omission, suggest Colorado was none of those things. He called the Volunteers’ operation “a next level up.”

Prime built a program on spectacle. Staub’s comments suggest the substance was always lacking, a thought that has been shared by this analyst over and over again.

OMG… I think it's crazy when a player says something alarming and they don't know it.. did they only pay attention to shedeur ? pic.twitter.com/0LUJlbEvMv

— OC (@primeneeds) March 17, 2026

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