SALT LAKE CITY – Following arguably the most embarrassing defeat of his three seasons at Colorado, Deion Sanders kept his composure in a postgame press conference Saturday night at Rice-Eccles Stadium.
That’s not unusual for Sanders, who handles losses publicly better than many head coaches. Inside, however, the Buffaloes head coach was fuming.
A 53-7 loss to Utah – which moved into the Associated Press Top 25 at No. 24 on Sunday – exposed a plethora of CU’s flaws and Sanders said this isn’t the type of loss to just flush and move on from, at least not right away.
“No, no, not right now,” he said. “Did you see my tone? I love you guys (in the media). You guys are wonderful and I’m trying to be as pleasant as I can, but it is what it is. You know I don’t sugarcoat nothing. It is what it is. You know we gonna start with me.”
For the Buffs (3-5, 1-4 Big 12) to salvage their season, however, they’ll have to get past this one quickly.
Arizona (4-3, 1-3) will be in Boulder on Saturday. The Big 12 announced Sunday that the game is slated for a 5 p.m. kickoff at Folsom Field and will be broadcast on FS1. After a solid start to the season, Arizona has lost two in a row and three of four.
That game is followed by a trip to West Virginia (2-6, 0-5), which has lost five in a row.
Both games are winnable, if the Buffs can bounce back from Saturday’s debacle.
“We just can’t quit,” quarterback Kaidon Salter said. “I feel like this is a team that won’t quit and is just going to keep on going hard as we can go and just being us, man.
“We’ve just got to go out there and have fun with the game, go out there and execute the game plan, just keep on practicing hard and just go out there and play football. I mean, that’s what we’ve got to do and I feel like we’re capable of finishing this season off strong.”
Saturday was, by far, CU’s worst performance of the season. In fact, it was the only time in eight games that the Buffs simply had no shot to win in the second half.
Utah dominated in every way possible, rushing for 422 yards, racking up 587 total yards and holding CU to 140 yards. The Buffs didn’t get on the board until 9 minutes, 3 seconds to play in the game, when backup quarterback Ryan Staub scored on a 1-yard run to cut the deficit to 46-7.
CU still has a shot to get to six wins and reach bowl eligibility, but that seemed like an unattainable goal in the moments after Saturday’s loss.
“We ain’t thinking about no bowl right now,” Sanders said. “We thinking about this moment. Let’s grade this moment. Let’s figure out why this happened. And let’s make sure we (take the steps so) that it don’t happen again, but let’s identify why. … I need to know all these whys before we could move on and even think about something down the street.”
Sanders and his staff will spend a lot of time trying figure out why Saturday happened.
Defensively it was a disaster, as Utah freshman quarterback Byrd Ficklin, making his first career start, looked like a Heisman Trophy candidate. When asked how his conversation went with defensive coordinator Robert Livingston after the game, Sanders said bluntly, “Wasn’t pleasant.”
It was a disaster offensively, too. An offensive line that has been solid all season was manhandled by Utah. Salter had a horrible game statistically (9-of-22, 37 yards, one interception), but spent much of his night trying to run away from unblocked or poorly blocked Utes.
Salter was sacked five times and Pro Football Focus marked seven of his 13 incompletions as “throwaways” to escape more sacks. One of those resulted in an intentional grounding penalty in the end zone, giving Utah a safety and a 19-0 lead.
Overall, Utah blitzed Salter and Staub on 24 of 31 dropbacks, picking up seven sacks on the night.
While the Buffs spend the next couple of days trying to figure out the whys, Salter and linebacker Jeremiah Brown emphatically agreed that the players are still confident they can move past this one and rebound.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Brown said. “There’s no quit. No quit at all. I love this team.”