Deion Sanders on Buffs’ tough season: ‘I know how to get it right’

The Colorado Buffaloes have done a complete 180 from a season ago. After making the Alamo Bowl and being in contention for a Big 12 Championship a season ago, Deion Sanders and his squad have posted a lousy 3-9 record that has been filled with inconsistent play and embarrassing losses.

This time last week, Sanders said that he needed a little more time to prove that he’s the right man leading the program for the Buffs. There has been frustration growing within the fanbase this season, as a plethora of coaching blunders and misses in the transfer portal are a large part as to why this team has won just three games and lost another five by at least two touchdowns.

After the Buffs let up 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter against Arizona State — highlighted by Sanders inexplicably subbing in a walk-on running back who fumbled on his first touch in the red zone — there’s next-to-nothing to play for in the season finale against Kansas State this weekend, especially since Julian Lewis won’t be playing to preserve his redshirt.

Sanders knows that this season hasn’t been what Buffs fans have expected, and at his weekly media availability on Tuesday, said that he knows what he needs to do going forward.

“I don’t break glass in case of emergency,” Sanders said. “I know how to get it right. I’ll get it right. We’re heading in the right direction. Some things happened and we took a quick left instead of staying right. But I know how to get it right, and I will.”

How does he plan on doing so? With the 97th-ranked recruiting class for 2026 just a week before signing day and over three dozen seniors on the roster, all signs are point to Sanders dipping heavily into the transfer portal — once again — for his Louis luggage. While that worked well with Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders along with some other focal pieces ahead of Colorado’s 2024 season, that strategy backfired in a massive way this season, something that the whole country has seen.

Sanders also acknowledged that the money becomes an issue in the portal, which could be solved by targeting more high-school recruits.

“We may not be able to accomplish everything we need to because that takes a lot of money,” he said.

Coach Prime has been reluctant to go after high schoolers in his recruiting classes, even though those players have been some of the best for him this season. Those are the players you can build a foundation with as a program, not a slew of portal guys who were third-stringers at SEC schools and will only be in Boulder for a season or two at the most. Especially if they’re cheaper than the players in the portal, it seems like a no-brainer that he should be recruiting the high schoolers more given the success they’ve had in this program.

Jordan Seaton and Lewis are two of the most valuable pieces any football program can want on their side, and Sanders knows that. He now has to do his due diligence of finding the right guys to put around them.

“We’ve got some key pieces that’s there that you can work with, and I’m happy with that. Sometimes you need to calibrate and you need to reset… we need to reset right now,” Sanders said.

If his Buffs aren’t successful and don’t make a bowl game next season, there will be some uncomfortable conversations that will need to take place around Sanders’ future in Boulder. While he’s not on the hot seat right now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that one of the highest-paid coaches in college football should be winning more than four games in a season consistently, not just one out of every three.

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