Following a humbling defeat on Saturday in Kansas City, Colorado doesn’t have much time to regroup, and that suits head coach Deion Sanders just fine.
Sanders and his 23rd-ranked Buffaloes (8-3, 6-2 Big 12) will face Oklahoma State (3-8, 0-8) in the regular season finale at Folsom Field on Friday (10 a.m., ABC). The Buffs will be looking to rebound from a 37-21 loss to Kansas that ended their four-game winning streak and dented their chances of reaching the Big 12 title game.
“We’re thankful that we have one less day, pretty much,” Sanders said after the game. “We’re thankful because now you just, you gotta flush it and get it on and let’s go to the next window.”
Although CU has been playing well most of the season, there’s a lot to fix going into Friday’s game.
Defensively, the Buffs had their worst performance of the season, giving up a season-high 520 yards in offense, including 331 rushing yards — the most allowed by a CU defense since the 2022 finale.
The Buffs defense had been good on third downs and getting the opposition off the field, but Kansas was 9-for-14. After two of the five misses, the Jayhawks converted on fourth down. On the other three, they kicked field goals.
KU also did a lot of its damage on first downs, but the down didn’t seem to matter. KU held the ball for 40 minutes, 11 seconds and controlled the Buffs’ defense all day. According to Pro Football Focus, CU had 15 missed tackles.
“It’s not like we didn’t know what they were going to do,” Sanders said. “I mean, every play that was called, you could hear it in the headset, you know what was coming. We just got to take care of it. We just got to do a better job in preventing it and we did not do that today.”
Offensively, the Buffs took a bit to get going, with a three-and-out on their first possession and a failed fourth-down conversion attempt on their second. By the time they got the ball a third time, they were down 17-0.
This was the eighth time in 11 games that CU couldn’t score on its opening possession and the fourth time it was scoreless in the first quarter.
“I’m the one orchestrating it, so I noticed that we’re slow out of box,” quarterback Shedeur Sanders said. “We’re finding different ways to get going fast. Of course, it’s close to the end of the season, and we say that week after week, and we got to do it. So we just got to find and create a strategy going into last couple games we have left to get that done.”
Despite that, the offense wasn’t bad on Saturday. The Buffs scored on three consecutive possessions to pull within 23-21 early in the third quarter, but had the ball just twice more. In the last 26:59 of the game, CU had the ball for just 7 minutes, 43 seconds.
Overall, CU finished with 308 yards, but ran a season-low 42 plays — 15 less than in any other game. CU averaged 7.3 yards per play, which was its best average since the opener against North Dakota State (8.8).
“Well, 21 points in 19 minutes of possession, I’m pretty good with that,” Coach Prime said. “I think I’ll take that. We got to do better defensively.”
The opportunity to get well is there this week against an OSU team that has fallen stunningly short of preseason expectations. Considered one of the top contenders for the Big 12 title, OSU opened the season at No. 17 in the Associated Press Top 25 and got to No. 13 at one point before its slide.
The Cowboys are near the bottom of the Big 12 in scoring and points allowed, but Coach Prime isn’t taking anything for granted, especially during Thanksgiving week.
“The thing about this week is you gotta really guard the young men’s minds, because family comes in town, and friends and loved ones come in town,” he said. “You gotta keep them focused. Then you got the other team leaving away from their family, friends and loved ones, and they’re coming to be spoilers.
“So you gotta refocus your young men and let them understand that this is not about turkey and dumplings and … cranberry sauce. It’s not about that. It’s about football, man.”
