The end may be nigh for several members of Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes football coaching staff this offseason. CBS Sports’ Brad Crawford believes the team’s 3-5 start should lead to a full teardown, specifically mentioning defensive coordinator Robert Livingston and offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur. CU is coming off the worst loss of the “Prime Time” era in Boulder, a 53-7 drubbing at the hands of the Utah Utes.
Crawford acknowledged that this Buffs team wasn’t going to be good, but also admitted that it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.
“Scheduled to be a retooling year after losing Shedeur Sanders and Heisman winner Travis Hunter to the NFL Draft, Colorado is enduring an unexpected rebuild that could lead to a full teardown of several processes if lackluster play continues. Sanders struggled to pinpoint why his team was losing close games early, before Saturday night's no-show at Utah sounded several alarms,” Crawford wrote.
“Sanders hasn't yet made a coordinator change at Colorado, but this season may call for one. Charles Kelly left for an assistant position at Auburn in 2023 following Colorado's 4-8 finish, after which Sanders hired Robert Livingston -- formerly a secondary coach with the Bengals -- to run his defense.
“Pat Shurmur has been with Sanders since his arrival from Jackson State, initially serving as an offensive analyst before Sean Lewis was demoted from his OC role and later departed to become head coach at San Diego State.
“Colorado hasn't met expectations this season, and the onus will be on Sanders to make changes where he deems fit at year's end.”
The thing is, though, Coach Prime promised this team to be even better than the teams he had with his sons, Shedeur and Shilo, and Travis Hunter. He said they would be better before the season, in what is increasingly looking like coach-speak in hindsight.
“They were great players. We have a better team. There's a difference between great players and a great team. We have a better team, but we can never replace those types of players. It may take three players on offense to replace a Travis Hunter. It may take two players to replace a Shedeur Sanders, and that's what we brought here,” Sanders said.
When a team fails to meet even modest expectations like this, change is inevitable. While Coach Prime has tried to say the problem is a lack of spending power, perhaps he should acknowledge it may be a misuse of spending power that’s the real problem.