What should we expect from Colorado in Deion Sanders' first season?
Yahoo Sports' Jason Fitz spoke with ESPN college football analyst Jesse Palmer about the Buffaloes outlook for 2023 with Prime leading the way as head coach.
Video Transcript
JASON FITZ: Now, one of the teams that's likely not going to be in the College Football Playoff conversation but we seem to talk about every day right now is Colorado, largely because of Deion. Now, I'm sure you saw Tom Luginbill had some words about the overall talent there. Deion's clapped back to it. I guess when you separate all of the noise that's happening around Colorado, what should our realistic expectations be for Deion and for the program this year?
JESSE PALMER: Certainly, there is going to be more talent on the field. I think when you bring in guys like Travis Hunter, Alton McCaskill, guys like that, I mean, at certain positions, they are going to be better. Now, is that going to translate into wins, necessarily, consistently throughout the course of the year? I don't think that's a reasonable expectation.
But I think the talent gap is going to get a lot better for Colorado moving forward. I think Deion did an outstanding job in terms of his hires at offensive and defensive coordinators this offseason as well. You know Prime's a great motivator.
And so it'll be interesting. I mean, we'll see week one against TCU just how that looks. But I think for anybody to think Colorado is competing for a Pac-12 championship, that's completely unrealistic. And from a roster top to bottom with a bunch of new faces running new schemes, how fast do they gel? How much chemistry does this team have?
They're going to face a lot of adversity early. But no doubt, because of the personality that is Prime, that's why we're watching Colorado and talking about them. That's why they hired them. We're talking about Colorado, and you just mentioned it-- they're not competing for a national championship. But all of a sudden, they seem more relevant. And that's the benefit of bringing someone in like Prime.