Unverified Veracity Looks at CU’s Team Culture, Football Standouts, and Coaching Issues

Leadership and Culture Issues

I think CU is suffering from a leadership and culture problem that is caused by the large number of transfers.

Transfers are often (understandably) concerned with individual branding and short-term urgency (ie, “get yourself to the NFL”) instead of having program-related concerns. This directly impacts the succcess of the team.

CU needs to create a culture of internal peer-driven accountability, long-term player development, and stability/program continuity – three pillars that I believe every program needs if it wants to compete for championships.  

Let’s look at each of these 3 pillars individually.

First, CU needs more peer-driven accountability, where captains and veterans enforce culture without constant coach intervention.  The problem is that when there are 65+ new players every year, most of the players in the program don’t know what standards need to be met in the first place. 

It’s asking a lot for the (relatively) few retuning players to bear 100% of the leadership role.  As a result, the team often looks rudderless from a leadership standpoint. It leads to statements like Kaidon Salter’s post-game comment that being benched by the coaches really messed with his head, which is not the kind of quote that you want floating around.

Second, CU needs more long-term player development. I think Deion Sanders is slowly starting to realize that player development is the key to a successful program.

As long-time CU poster Nik said on a recent AllBuffs post:

“The majority of the guys who got snaps for the BYU, Houston and GA Tech teams are not guys that Prime had any interest in recruiting out of HS. I think he’s adjusted his mentality about this, but his philosophy his first year was 100% “if you can’t help the team on gameday in the upcoming season, why would I sign you?” His roster management was like he was in the NFL or at a JUCO. CFB is at least as much about talent and culture development pipeline within your roster as it is about game-ready talent at the top of your roster.

Prime seemed to evolve more each year in 2024 and 2025 recruiting on this mentality with his recruiting approach and the 2026 strategy looks like it’s going to be a lot more focused on prep recruiting than previous years.

But it’s not going to be fixed overnight.

2025 scholarship roster:

Seniors – 34
Juniors – 15
Sophomores – 13
Freshmen – 17

Within position groups, there’s actually quite a bit of class balance but with some glaring problems where I think we panicked. IOL has 9 seniors. That’s ridiculous. I’d rather sign 9 HS recruits with mediocre ratings than 9 mediocre senior transfers. Ideally, you sign 1 or 2 transfer starters and load up the rest with preps to develop (knowing you’re going to redshirt at least half of those freshman OLs). Same thing at DT where we have 6 seniors. Between the 2 groups, that’s 15 of our 34 seniors. If it was 5 or 6 and the other 9 or 10 were spread among the classes, we’d almost be in balance.”

I think Nik’s right on.

Third, CU’s stability comes from Deion Sanders. The probelm is that CU hasn’t had program continuity over the last 9 months or so because of Deion Sanders’ health issues.  CU’s culture and identity flows directly from Deion.  His style, standards and public messaging drive everything around the football program.  His off-season absence really looms over the team right now — particuarly because player-led accountability isn’t/wasn’t there.

The good news is that these problems are fixable.  I think Deion Sanders is a smart man and understands these issues — and hopefully he understands that hte “fix” starts with recruiting more high school players.  This becomes an even bigger priority given the eliminatino of 1 of the 2 transfer portal windows.

CU’s In-Game Presentation Has Issues

First, the decision to have a drone show behind Dal Ward was definitely a choice.  Most of the stadium couldn’t see the drone show – not that they were missing very much.  

The St. Vrain Valley School District has a drone program that far outshines whatever the “drone show” was on Saturday night.  Shoutout to Danny Hernandez and his crew at the St. Vrain Innovation Center.  

Second, CU’s in-house replays on the videoboards are awful.  For the love of God, can the camera operators please zoom out?!?!  Fans can’t see anything on replays because the camera operators are trying to zoom in and shoot close-up “epic” shots.  That’s not what fans at the game want to see.  We want to see how a play develops, or whether a pass interference call was legit or not.  

We don’t need to see Amari McNeill’s facial hair – we want to see if the defensive back grabbed him 10 yards before the ball got there.

Third, why didn’t the big videoboard on the south end of the stadium show replays for most of the game Saturday night? We were stuck watching replays (err, close ups) on the 480p tube television on the north end of the stadium.

Game Management Issues

Let me begin by noting that CU’s program would be in far worse shape without Deion Sanders.  This program was headed for irrelevance without him given the current climate of football.  

Still, there’s no excuse for the game management mistakes that we’re seeing happen over and over.  

Deion Sanders is making $10m+ per year and there’s 132 guys on staff – yet he still can’t figure out when to call (and when not to call) time outs in a football game.  Maybe we need to follow Bill Simmons’ idea and hire a 12-year-old kid that has played Madden for 3 straight years and place him in charge of time outs.   

The 4^th quarter time out before punting was awful.  So was the lack of a time out to settle Kaidon Salter on the last drive of the game.  

Cat-and-Mouse Coaching Adjustmentes

CU’s first quarter was fantastic.  With Pat Shurmur calling a great first 20 plays, CU jumped to a quick 14-0 lead.  The Dre’lon Miller wildcat look really confused BYU.  

BYU adjusted, however, and moved 7 — and sometimes 8 — players into the defensive box.  (For the record, Kalani Sitake is a hell of a football coach).  CU “adjusted” by abandoning the run and instead embracing the short passing game.  

Shurmur should have thrown the ball over the top of the defense.  Sincere Brown had 1-on-1 coverage on the outside for the entirety of the 2^nd half, and CU didn’t throw him a deep ball.  I know that part of the failure to throw deep is because Kaidon Salter isn’t a great deep ball thrower, but if CU takes 2-3 shots downfield, BYU’s defense would have adjusted to more 2 deep safety looks.  This, in turn, would have re-opened the running game for CU.  It’s a game of constant cat-and-mouse adjustments, and Pat Shurmur lost the battle on Saturday night.

By the way, it’s inexcusable that Sincere Brown had only 1 target in the game.

Let’s Get Some Good News, Eh?

Dre’lon Miller had 10 touches, 79 total yards and 2 TDs in a breakout game.  Good to see him break through, and curious why it’s taken this long for CU to utilize him in the Deebo Samuels role.  

Tawfiq Byard is quickly establishing himself as CU’s best defensive players.  He has 30 tackles in CU’s last 3 games, and leads all Big 12 safeties in solo tackles this season. 

Yaya Attia, CU’s interior offensive linemen turned tight end, had a great game.  CU has really missed having effective blocking from the tight end position, and I like the insertion of Attia at tight end.  He’s arguably CU’s best run blocker at this point, and I hope to see more of him in this role.  It may also be time to dial up a trick play pass to Attia.

Nice to see Jaheim Oatis get more playing time as he had 22 snaps on Saturday night (out of 70 total defensive snaps). Oatis is materially better than some of the players that play in front of him. It confuses me why he doesn’t play more.

More Cornerback Issues

CU’s cornerbacks are really struggling.  On Saturday night, CU’s three starting cornerbacks / nickelbacks all played poorly.  DJ McKinney had a PFF score of 54.7, Teon Parks had a PFF score of 56.9, and Preston Hodge had a PFF score of 58.3.  These three played every snap for the defense.  

Deion Sanders in his post-game press conference noted, “We have to do a much better job in the back end.” The downfield penalties were, once again, brutal.  

Also, quick note to Robert Livingston – it’s okay to play zone defense occasionally.  CU is constantly giving up big QB runs because the defensive backs are chasing wide receivers in man-to-man.  If CU is going to play so much man-to-man, then put a LB spy on the QB.

What To Do With Quarterbacks?

Kaidon Salter is a very talented football player but an average QB.  

Salter doesn’t process the field very quickly.  Pat Shurmur has tried to coach around this issue by effectively cutting the field in half.  Still, even playing with half a field, Salter often misses seeing CU’s open WRs.

Despite this issue, however, I still believe Salter gives CU the best chance to win.  He is a very dangerous runner, and he’s become much more decisive when running since the first couple weeks of the season. 

Yes,  Shedeur Sanders would have won that game for CU.  But, for the record, I don’t think JuJu Lewis would have won that game and it’s too early to give up on bowl eligibility.  Yes, it’ll be an uphill battle for bowl eligibility.  Still, CU is as talented as every team it will play the rest of this season.  I’m on record for saying that CU should turn the team over to Juju Lewis only if CU is no longer eligible for a bowl game.    

For more in the BuffsBlog blogosphere, check out:

Unverified Veracity Looks at 5 Questions – Including is there a Big Time Silent Commitment?, How Good is Salter Really?, and is CU as Good as it Looked Against Wyoming?