Deion Sanders Admits Colorado Has One Goal: “We Gotta Win”
Deion Sanders has one heck of a challenge ahead of him as he enters his fourth season as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame cornerback has had the definition of an up-and-down tenure in Boulder. During his debut season in 2023, the Buffaloes captured the attention of observers and the national media by storming out to a 3-0 start and knocking off the No. 17-ranked TCU Horned Frogs — who were coming off a College Football Playoff National Championship Game appearance — in their season opener.
However, after reaching a peak ranking of No. 18 in the polls, they went on to lose eight of their final nine games. They bounced back in 2024, posting a 9-4 record that included a bowl appearance. The highlight of the year was two-way phenom Travis Hunter winning the Heisman Trophy, becoming just the second player in program history to accomplish the feat.
However, after their breakthrough 2024 season, the Buffaloes went 3-9 following the departures of Hunter and Sanders’ son, former star quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
The Buffaloes felt the departures of Sanders and Hunter in a big way last season, with eight of their losses coming by double digits and three coming by at least 25 points.
Sanders Rebuilds After Difficult Season
Colorado is expected to be slightly better this season, aided by quarterback Julian Lewis returning, but the Buffaloes face an uphill battle to become a major player in the competitive Big 12 Conference. Sanders’ No. 1 priority is ensuring the Buffaloes are back on the right track. He has focused on upgrading his coaching staff and intensifying his recruiting efforts.
“I feel like I have the best coaching staff I’ve ever had, coaching college football, coaching high school football, coaching youth football,” Sanders said in a one-on-one interview with Ratings on behalf of his partnership with Depend. “I have a tremendous coaching staff that I’m excited about. Not only that, we have a locker room full of young men, 103 of them at this point, that I feel like not only that they’re good, they’re the type of men that we needed and wanted, and we identified them, located them and brought them in and were able to sign them.”
Sanders continues to emphasize the respect he has for his coaching staff, including defensive coordinator Chris Marve and offensive coordinator Brennan Marion. He also highlighted a different approach that the Buffaloes have taken compared with recent years, prioritizing high school recruiting over the transfer portal.
“We have a tremendous staff filled with not only former pros but collegiate coaches as well as a couple high school guys that were really good, not only that, they’re really good recruiters,” Sanders said of his coaching staff.
“What we’re doing right now in recruiting, we change courses instead of targeting a tremendous amount of guys that’s in the portal, because the portal is different now. We’re now targeting probably about 20 high school young men, and we’re probably going to bring in our probably largest class since I’ve been a head coach here to Colorado.”
Buffaloes Shift Recruiting Strategy
Marion, who was named the Buffaloes’ offensive coordinator at the end of the 2025 season, built an impressive résumé at Sacramento State. His offense averaged 33.8 points per game. He previously led UNLV to an average of 36.2 points per game in 2024, ranking 14th in the FBS.
“Because now we have what we want in the depth that we want in certain positions,” Sanders said. “Now we could go to high schools to fulfill the rest of them. Brennan Marion is our OC. He’s a tremendous former head coach, tremendous mind in college football. What he’s going to do for the offense is going to be tremendous, because he’s averaged in his whole career. He’s averaged 30 to 35 points a game, and that’s our threshold for winning. When we normally score 30 points a game, we normally win.”
When asked about his objectives for his fourth season in Boulder, Sanders kept it simple — win.
“Yeah, we gotta win,” Sanders said.
“That’s it, simple as that. We’ve done a tremendous job of graduating as well as GPA, we’ve achieved over 3.0 this last semester. I think several of the semesters that I’ve been the head coach, we’ve achieved the highest GPA that we’ve had in the history of the school, which is phenomenal. But we gotta win.”