Colorado Buffaloes football coach Deion Sanders left the world stunned on Saturday when he handed the reins of the offense to Ryan Staub – and the two-year backup delivered with the best quarterback performance since the player he sat behind for two years, Shedeur Sanders, ran the show in Boulder.
Staub’s 7/10 passing performance, complete with two touchdown tosses, generated 157 yards of offense for the Buffs in the 31-7 win over the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens. It was more than what Kaidon Salter (13/16, 127 all-purpose yards) produced. Julian Lewis, the highest-paid quarterback of the three, looked the furthest away from being able to run Pat Shurmur’s offense.
Staub looked like he was built to run it. He just received practically no media coverage before the season.
That’s why USA Today’s Brent Schrotenboer, the Buffs beat writer for the biggest newspaper publisher, was caught by surprise at Stuab’s emergence. Schrotenboer called it “wild on many levels.”
“This development is wild on many levels. Salter and Lewis got all the attention before the season as they competed to replace Deion’s quarterback son, Shedeur Sanders, now with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns,” Schrotenboer wrote.
“Could it be that the answer to replace Shedeur is the quarterback who’s been there all along?
“Deion Sanders planned before the game to give each of the three quarterbacks two series of play to start the game against Delaware. The fact that Staub outplayed the other two to earn more playing time is the twist that hardly anyone saw coming.”
Coach Prime hasn’t officially announced anything. But he came pretty close in the immediate aftermath of CU’s first win of the season, claiming that we all saw what he saw when put on the spot about his QB competition.
Staub looks like QB1. If he isn’t named Colorado’s starter, calls for him to be will only increase.