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The college football world viewed Colorado’s decision to hire Deion Sanders as a major risk. Athletic director Rick George was smart enough to see the reasons for hesitation. There certainly had to be an element of blind faith, but George knew that Sanders was the lightning rod needed to revive a life support program. Guess? It worked. And within a few months.
Sanders has so many qualities that cannot be matched. His star power cannot be duplicated. His vision of promoting his program on YouTube is something that makes other coaches cringe. And he speaks with conviction about everything. The best part? Sanders does what he says. He is a doer. He said he brought his Louis Vuitton luggage to Boulder and then proceeded to design the largest selection the sport has ever seen. Colorado went from a one-win team in 2022 to a four-win (and counting?) team in contention for bowl eligibility.
However, there is one quality that Sanders lacks.
Patience.
That must be why Colorado’s head coach made the knee-jerk decision last week to take primary play-calling duties away from offensive coordinator Sean Lewis and hand them to former NFL coach Pat Shurmur. Lewis was perhaps Sanders’ most important coaching hire during the offseason, and he was largely credited with being the reason the Buffaloes scored so many points early in the season despite a clear deficiency on the offensive line. Lewis left a head coaching job at Kent State to play at Colorado and seemed destined to be an attractive candidate for a Power 5 job this offseason.
CU averaged 32.1 points and 408.7 yards in eight games with Sean Lewis as the primary play-caller. Last year, the Buffs averaged 15.4 points and 281.3 yards per game. (Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
Sanders then took the playing sheet from Lewis’s hand and replaced him with a coach who had not been an assistant at the college level in 25 years. Shurmur, who worked as an analyst for Sanders, isn’t some genius play-caller who can solve all of Colorado’s problems in a week. Let’s face it: fans of the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants could do a detailed PowerPoint presentation of all the things that went wrong when he was head coach of those franchises.
The results of this change were exactly what you would expect. Colorado lost to Oregon State 26-19 on Saturday night. The offense only gained 238 total yards, some of which came late in the game as the Buffaloes tried to erase a two-score deficit and faced a soft Beavers defense.
Quarterback Shedeur Sanders was still getting beat up. And Colorado’s offense rushed for minus-7 yards.
How did we get here? How did Sanders feel strong enough to fix the only thing that, honestly, wasn’t broken?
“We’re not going to demean Sean Lewis, we’re not going to take that tone,” Sanders said. “Sean is a good man. I think he’s a good play caller. We just needed a change at that time, we just had to try something different at that time and we did that. I don’t look back on it, I don’t doubt myself at all. Because there’s more to it than what you may know, so let’s just trust the process. Let’s just trust the process.”
Did anything else happen behind the scenes? Lewis and Sanders must have had a fundamental disagreement over the extent to which Colorado attempted to run the football. Maybe it had something to do with how well the quarterback – Sanders’ son – was protected.
Sanders didn’t provide much insight into how he came to the decision, but he did acknowledge that we may not understand it.
“I’m not going to make all my thoughts public,” Sanders said. “My thoughts are my thoughts. I’m not going to make it public when I make a decision. Just know that when I decide to do something, I won’t stumble or stutter or look back. It is what it is, and it will be. … I made the decision to help this team win. You do not know all the intangibles if you only look in from the outside of the cradle. I have tinted windows and you can’t even see the house, but you guys are jumping to conclusions about what I should and shouldn’t do.
Maybe Sanders’ house has tinted windows, but no other football program is more exposed to the public than Colorado. Much of Colorado’s daily football is posted on YouTube. That’s part of Sanders’ brilliance in promoting the brand and the players who wear Colorado’s uniform.
But this is problematic.
From the outside, it looks like Sanders made a hasty decision. That decision didn’t lead to an offensive renaissance, and it certainly feels like Lewis will be done in Boulder.
This is the kind of move a desperate coach would make. But what was the reason for Colorado’s desperation? There are three games left in the regular season and Colorado has already (easily) surpassed last year’s win total. By all accounts, Colorado has been a resounding success this year, in large part because it was so entertaining to watch Shedeur Sanders, Travis Hunter, Jimmy Horn and Dylan Edwards cook… on offense.
Sanders seems concerned about how people will view his decision to “demote” Lewis. He doesn’t want anyone to look down on Lewis’s ability or “downgrade” anything Lewis has accomplished.
“You have to understand that in college football you only have so many coaches, so when you make a move like we did, that means someone… I don’t call it a demotion, I say a move,” Sanders said. ‘I think everyone earns the same amount of money. If you get demoted, it’s a hit to your check. It’s a move we had to make.”
Had to? Perhaps we should blindly trust Sanders on this. He will repeatedly tell you to trust the process. And to his credit, the process has led to more improvements in a short time than most people expected.
But the move is worrying. More than anyone, Sanders needed to understand that Colorado is dealing with personnel issues on the offensive line that coaching can’t solve. He literally talked about it last week, indicating that improving the talent level up front is the most important task this offseason. Heck, Colorado even hosted five-star offensive lineman Jordan Seaton for an official visit before the Oregon State game.
Sanders has given us little reason to doubt him and his stature during his first year as Colorado’s coach. Losses were even expected. But for a new Power 5 head coach, this move will leave you scratching your head.
It makes you wonder if these are the kinds of decisions that could derail such a promising start to a program, which might have been hopeless for any other coach.
(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
