With Colorado’s 2025 football season officially put to rest on Saturday, head coach Deion Sanders said he wouldn’t waste any time getting started on the 2026 campaign.
First order of business?
“Mentality,” Sanders said after the Buffaloes’ 24-14 loss at Kansas State on Saturday. “(Mentality with) personnel, coaching, everything.”
CU had a strong mental makeup in 2024, when it went 9-4 and was led by seniors such as Shedeur Sanders, Shilo Sanders, Cam’Ron Silmon-Craig, LaJohntay Wester and LaVonta Bentley, as well as junior Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter.
With that group gone this year, the Buffs weren’t the same mentally, contributing to a 3-9 record.
“Well, personnel is mentality,” Coach Prime said.
Senior linebacker Jeremiah Brown admitted the Buffs struggled to replace the strong leaders they had in 2024.
“Leaders,” Brown said of the difference this year. “Leaders I feel like we missed.”
The challenge for Sanders and his staff is to fix the mentality of the team going into 2026 and find strong leaders.
Sanders said it “takes a little more work” to find mentally strong players in recruiting.
The Buffs also have some work to do to keep the current players who have the right mental makeup, such as left tackle Jordan Seaton, who could be heavily pursued by other programs.
Sanders didn’t talk specifically about Seaton, but knows it’ll be a challenge to keep the best players already on the roster.
“You’ve got to understand, when a guy leaves a program that selected him, picked him, or got him out the portal, he leaves for a multitude of reasons,” Sanders said. “The number one reason people leave is money. It’s not a disdain for staff, a disdain for players; it’s money. Let’s just be honest, man. Let’s stop sugarcoating this foolishness.”
Ultimately, however, Sanders said he and the staff have to figure out a way to build a roster that has the right mentality to win in 2026.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting these guys ready and preparing them and getting them knowledgeable, to understand what’s happening, what’s coming, and physically able to go get it and to stop it,” he said. “I mean, it helps with a bag (money), but it helps with having the right personnel on the sidelines, as well as playing the game.”
Brown played his entire five-year college career for Sanders, first at Jackson State and then at CU, and he has no doubt Sanders can fix the Buffs’ mentality next year.
“They’ll bring the right guys in that want it, like want to win,” Brown said. “He’s gonna bring those guys in with the right mentality. He dealt with a lot this offseason, so he wasn’t able to be as thorough as he usually was with us, and he told us about that. So he knows this offseason, the guys that he brings in are going to be that mentality that he wants.”
The first step in upgrading the roster comes Wednesday with the start of the early signing period for high school recruits.
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