GAME AT A GLANCE
Matchup: Colorado Buffaloes (2-1) at Baylor Bears (2-1)
Kickoff: Saturday, 10:00 a.m. MT, McLane Stadium, Waco, Texas (capacity 45,140)
TV: ESPN2
Radio: KOA 850 AM & 94.1 FM
Series: Colorado leads 10-7
Under Deion Sanders, Colorado’s conference opener has served as the trailer. Three times, the rest of the season has been the movie it promised.
In 2023, the Buffaloes were 3-0 and the hype was at full volume when they traveled to Oregon for the Pac-12 opener. They lost 42-6 and went 1-8 in league play.
A year later, the excitement came with a hedge. Fans had been burned once, and a 28-10 loss at Nebraska made them wary of buying in again. Colorado took a 2-1 record into its Big 12 opener against Baylor. It won that game in overtime, on a night that ended with a goal post coming down at Folsom Field, and CU went 7-2 in the Big 12.
Last season, Big 12 play opened with a 36-20 loss at Houston, and Colorado went 1-8 in the league again.
This team arrives Saturday where the 2024 group did: 2-1, a lopsided nonconference road loss behind it, and Baylor back for the sequel’s opening scene. This time the Big 12 opener is in Waco, Texas, and the loss CU will be coming from was 41-7 at the hands of Northwestern. The Buffaloes are 9.5-point underdogs.
Baylor remembers that 2024 game, too.
Dave Aranda called it a “heart-wrenching loss” that night. The Baylor coach said Monday that he still points to it when he talks to his players about finishing. “That season, with the ability to kind of look back at it, it’s a completely different season,” Aranda said. “(If) you finish out that play in that game.”
This isn’t the 2024 team, though. That one had Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, the Heisman Trophy winner, and it could win a game through the air when it had to. This roster does its talking with its hands in the dirt.
Colorado has run for at least 180 yards in all three games and is averaging 4.5 yards a carry, up from 3.5 last season. It averaged 5.5 last week, on a night when almost nothing else worked.
On the other side, the front that got pushed around last season is the one doing the pushing now. Colorado finished 135th nationally against the run a year ago, giving up 222.5 yards per game. Through three games it’s allowing 120, and 3.3 yards a carry. Lamont Lester Jr. had three sacks in the opener, and Georgia Tech finished with 51 rushing yards on 30 carries.
The trenches haven’t been spotless. Northwestern ran for 182 yards and held the ball for almost 37 minutes. The run game also goes to Waco short-handed: Running back Damian Henderson II is doubtful and offensive lineman Demetrius Hunter as well as tight end Charlie Williams will not suit up for the Buffs. JaQuail Smith, who ran for 91 yards on eight carries at Northwestern, is probable after being listed as questionable earlier this week.
Colorado will also be without the players Sanders said Tuesday are no longer part of the team. The program has not said who they are, and as of Thursday the official roster had not changed.
It’s also a team still learning itself. Sanders said Tuesday that the transfer era has changed what a roster is, that “your four years is two years now.” Players used to know the fight songs because they’d been around four or five years, he said. “It’s not like that anymore in college football. Everybody’s scattered.”
Some of that scattering runs straight to Waco. Receiver Dre’lon Miller and offensive lineman Cooper Lovelace were Buffs before they were Bears, and Aranda said Monday that Sanders makes a point of talking about them. At the Big 12’s spring meetings, Aranda said, Sanders “comes, sits right down next to me and starts talking about those guys and kind of just praising them.” Sanders told the same story from his side. “We’re always seated right by one another,” he said, and when Aranda asks about the players who left, Sanders said he’s been “a straight shooter.”
Nobody in the building has tried to cut Northwestern from the film.
“Everybody was mad about that loss,” safety Naeten Mitchell said Wednesday. “Nobody went in there expecting to lose that game.”
Cornerback Jason Stokes Jr. was more matter-of-fact about it.
“It’s football. Some days you have days that don’t go for you. Some days you have days that go excellent for you,” Stokes said. “You’ve just got to take it on the chin, keep moving, keep working.”
Safeties coach Vonn Bell put the week in plainer terms. The staff had to accept the loss and digest it, he said, then watch the film.
“Things are going to happen. Adversity happens,” Bell said. The question now, as he put it, is who his players are going to be.
Safety Randon Fontenette was asked how Sanders’ reaction to this loss compared to the one after Colorado beat Weber State by 31. After Weber State, Fontenette said, “we still won, so he understood that.” This time was different.
Fontenette didn’t read it as a bad sign. “We know Coach Prime wants to win, and we know he’s a winner,” he said. He added that he wouldn’t want the head coach to react any other way.
“I wouldn’t want to come back to a locker room where the coach is happy that we lost,” Fontenette said.
Saturday’s trailer premieres at 10 a.m. in Waco. The Buffaloes are hoping it’s a preview of 2024, not a rerun of 2023.
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