Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter are still really good. The rest of Deion Sanders’ football team? We’ll see about all that.
There was excitement after a 31-26 win over North Dakota State on Thursday night, and there are also some questions Colorado still needs to answer. Most, though, will be left talking about Shedeur Sanders, who finished 26-of-34 for 445 yards and four touchdowns in a sparkling 2024 debut, and Hunter, who caught three of those TDs as part of a 132-yard performance.
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Colorado was a bad football team last year. It might not be very good this year, either — we’ll see. But how will the wins and losses ultimately impact Sanders’ draft stock? Probably not much, especially if he’s moving the ball at will like he was in Week 1.
First glimpse at Colorado’s new scheme
Frankly, the fact Sanders consistently finds a way to make plays behind this type of patchwork offensive line play (and the ghost of a run game) probably only helps his stock with some scouts. He’s bigger and stronger this year, which is easy to see. And he’s still making off-platform plays and evading pressure.
He also stood in multiple times Thursday and made downfield throws right in the face of a hit.
SHEDEUR TO JIMMY HORN JR. FOR A 69-YARD TOUCHDOWN 😱 pic.twitter.com/0obguiDY6K
— ESPN (@espn) August 30, 2024
The big question, though, is whether he can sustain that for an entire season — because, if Thursday is any indication, he’s going to take a ton of hits again this season. New offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur was promoted to help give Sanders cleaner pass reads (he did that) and establish some type of run game that can help limit the hits on his quarterback (he hasn’t done that yet).
It’s hard to see because the results were so terrible, but there was a concerted effort by Shurmur to take some of the load off Sanders’ shoulders by establishing a run game. Again, it didn’t work — the Buffs finished at 2.6 yards per carry on 23 attempts.
But look at the ratio there: 34-to-23 pass-to-run. It’s unclear what Colorado’s ultimate desire is there, but it has to be closer to 50-50 than it was a year ago. It’ll never be even in an offense like this, but running more on early downs — which Colorado did some to open the game — chews the clock, lets the Buffs’ defense breathe and keeps a few hits off Sanders’ workload.
Beyond that, Colorado provided Sanders with far more clean pass reads as opposed to last season’s option-route preference. Sanders did a nice job of getting to the back side of several concepts, was aggressive down the middle of the field and (as usual) was supremely accurate all night. He finished the first half 12-of-15 for 254 yards and two touchdowns, and two of his misses were on-target throws.
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Where can Sanders improve?
Sanders’ timing still isn’t where you’d like it to be on every rep, as he’ll hang on to the ball a bit longer than he should or rip through his footwork before the receiver’s ready to come out of his route. His reaction time and evasiveness erase many of those hiccups at this level, although not all of them, and it’ll be even harder to cover up those moments when he’s in the NFL.
Some of the sacks and pocket hits Sanders took Thursday were the fault of poor offensive line play. Some were his fault because his footwork on dropbacks remains inconsistent. The latter happened on a third-and-4 sack in the first half, when Sanders rushed his footwork into his drop, resulting in his bailing too early and running into a sack.
There are also hits he takes like the one on the final two-minute drive of the first half, in which he spun out of the pocket and sprinted away from the defense before flipping his hips and firing a dart to an open receiver in the blink of an eye. He’s going to get hit. It happens.
Colorado’s offensive line is new, but it is more talented than a year ago, especially junior Kahlil Benson. It’s not unreasonable to think the Buffs could build a better pass-protection outfit by season’s end. Based on Thursday’s showing in the run game, though, Sanders might have to throw for 400-plus yards most weeks for Colorado to have any shot of winning.
Thursday’s performance simply confirms what we already knew, assuming Colorado can keep its QB healthy and upright: Sanders is very much in the QB1 discussion — and certainly in the Round 1 discussion — during these early stages of the 2025 NFL Draft cycle.
(Photo: Ron Chenoy / USA Today)
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Publish date : 2024-08-29 17:00:00
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