‘Dumbfounded’ Sanders blames night games, doesn’t know who QB is after Buffs loss

Deion Sanders started the week by slamming the media — he ended the week by sarcastically asking them for help diagnosing his football team’s problems after they were embarrassed by Houston.

“I’m still dumbfounded on what just transpired, you guys tell me,” Sanders asked as he closed out his news conference following the Colorado Buffaloes’ 36-20 loss.

Sanders said to the same group that he went after on Tuesday when it was reported that Ryan Staub would start on Saturday. The quarterback did indeed make his second start, completing Coach Prime’s quarterback carousel, which has seen two quarterbacks, Kaidon Salter and Juju Lewis, who weren’t Staub go to Big 12 Media Day. Followed by one in Salter starting Week 1 in a loss and then freshman Lewis getting time in Week 2’s win. But Lewis made way for Staub, who impressed in that game against Delaware, earning this week’s spot for the conference opener behind center.

Staub threw for 204 yards and one touchdown on 19 of 35 passing with two picks. In words, he was not good outside of two drives late in the second quarter, and it left Prime, well, speechless

“I’m lost for words… No one could have told me this game was going to turn out like this after the week of preparation we had. Nobody could’ve told me it would turn out like this,” Sanders shared, holding back. “It wasn’t good, I take full responsibility for the foolishness that went on out there that we call football. We gotta do better in every phase and in preparation.

A man who has a catchphrase for anything so much so that he keeps a journal of them in his desk is now voiceless at how bad his own football team is? He looked it on the sidelines during garbage time as his normal vigor appeared to turn to despair. Or maybe I’m just assigning emotions from 1,000 miles away — it could have been sleepiness, after all, he doesn’t like his football team to perform at the very late hour of 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time.

“Night games, we get our butts kicked at night. We normally get our butts kicked at night,” Sanders shared when asked why his so-called good preparation turned into such a poor result. “Maybe because we’re a morning practice team. We even try to implement and change the schedule, the schedule to accommodate the young man, to shut their bodies down at the time they go into sleep patterns and all that. We try to do everything we can to accommodate what’s going on. But we can’t place blame on what time is our game is. They play in the same darn time.”

The Buffs’ next two games at Folsom Field kick off at 8:15 p.m. Should we expect CU to struggle with something Prime has complained about for so long? Sanders just says they’ll have to do better.

Sanders says a lot even when he’s speechless, like that he’s taking responsibility, but he’ll blame anyone but himself, including a very normal Friday evening start time. It leads to some easy questions about his approach this season just within the quarterback room, for which he has no hints when CU kicks after dinner against Wyoming next week.

The quarterback questions persist. Why the quick hooks in the first three weeks? Why Staub now?

“I have no idea. Right now, I’m not thinking about that,” Sanders said of the quarterbacks. “I’m thinking about what transpired. How can we prevent what transpired from happening again? Trying to self-analyze, me first, what can I do better?

For starters, he could learn to properly manage a game, an issue that came up again on Saturday with the use of timeouts in the first half, but didn’t matter because the team was out-talented. He may want to take a home visit or two during high school recruiting, something he believes he’s above because the world revolves around him. Prime could even look at shaking up his coaching staff, starting with the much-maligned Pat Shurmur at offensive coordinator. Any Denver Broncos fan knows those issues, though they were somewhat covered up by last year’s talent, even when the OC held them back..

There’s A LOT Sanders could fix, but the fifth-highest-paid coach in the country doesn’t know how to start solving the issues despite seeing the problems before anyone else in the world.

“I see what I see when the game is transpiring. I’m trying to fix it as it’s unfolding right before your eyes. What you see, I see sometimes what you see. I probably saw it a few seconds early, and I kind of heard it going down there. Knew what was going to transpire,” Sanders said before he banged his fist into the table. “We’ve got to do better. Man, much better team. We’ve got to do better. Nobody could have told me that was going to go down like that. There’s no way.”

If the clock really is the culprit, the calendar won’t help. Colorado’s next two kick times are likely just a hint at what the league slate will be. And that won’t wait for body clocks to sync. Preparation can be a morning routine; performance will be a primetime business.

The quarterback hedging has to stop, too. Whether it’s Staub, Salter or preferably the development of the highly-rated Lewis, pick an identity and call a game that matches it.

Burning timeouts for subs, not calling them in the two-minute drill and punting possessions with preventable penalties are management issues, not talent deficits, and they pop up no matter what time of day CU takes the field.

“Struggling? We’re getting our butts kicked,” Sanders said. “We’re not successful on either side of the ball as we would like to be.”

Sanders says he takes responsibility. Good. Responsibility looks like clarity; CU doesn’t have that right now.

After the game, Sanders asked the room to tell him what he was missing. Pick a quarterback, pick an identity and stop blaming the lights. The problem isn’t the time of day. It’s who Colorado is when the lights come on.

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