BOULDER — While the son rises in the East, the father sets in the West.
Deion Sanders sports a 43-26 record as a college football coach. He went 36-14 with son Shedeur, Cleveland’s biggest cult hero since Drew Carey, as his QB1.
From Jackson State to CU, they always had each other’s backs. They almost always found a way. If you had to win one college football game to determine the fate of the free world, I’d put 2024 Shedeur with 2024 Deion on the headset against just about anybody. So long as they also had 2024 Travis Hunter to throw to.
But set them apart, as they’ve been for much of this odd, disjointed autumn, and neither looks quite the same.
Shedeur is finally getting a deserved shot to become the 4,077th quarterback since 1999 to try and save the Browns from themselves. Yet meanwhile, up in BoCo, Coach Prime is heading into a tussle with Kansas State (5-6) on Saturday with a 7-12 mark as a collegiate coach in games in which his son isn’t his starting signal-caller.
After a 42-17 home setback to Arizona State last weekend dropped the Buffs to 3-8 overall and 1-7 in Big 12 play, the elder Sanders now owns a 3-9 record in CU contests started by non-Shedeur QBs.
“You could be a loser, or a guy who lost games,” Coach Prime said. “I would rather be a guy who lost games than a loser. (Because) I’m not a loser.”
He’s not. Yet without Shedeur, Dad Sanders hasn’t exactly been tearing it up, either.
The third anniversary of Sanders’ introductory news conference at CU falls a week from Thanksgiving. Coach Prime has proven a ton of people wrong over the last 1,200 days or so, this person included.
He’s proven he could make CU a national brand again. He’s proven he could fill Folsom Field on the regular. He’s proven he could get the Buffs on ESPN’s “A block” and on the cover of national magazines. He’s proven he could bring a Heisman Trophy back to Boulder. He’s proven that you can chase a league title with a team rooted in transfers, so long as you land the right blend.
Still, in Year 3, the jury remains out on a ton of talking points. After going from four wins to nine wins to three or four again, we don’t know if The Prime Method is remotely sustainable at this level. Every former NFL or collegiate offensive lineman I’ve ever talked to likes CU left tackle Jordan Seaton and despises the fact that Seaton has to play with four new partners every summer. And, more to the point, we still don’t know if Sanders can win big as a college coach without his son acting as his eyes and ears between the hashmarks, as his point guard, as his literal coach on the floor.
On that final front, Julian Lewis is going to tell us an awful lot.
Lewis’ true freshman season, as you heard, officially ended Tuesday. Sanders announced that he was redshirting his teenage quarterback, who’d started the last two games for the Buffs and who’d already appeared in two others.
Under NCAA rules, players who appear in four or fewer regular-season games can count that shortened season as a redshirt year and still have four more seasons of eligibility in the bank.
“That’s my decision,” the Buffs coach explained. “I want what’s best for the kid, what’s best for his family, what’s best for this wonderful university that has given me this tremendous opportunity.
“I think (the decision) is best for everyone. But mainly, it’s great for him.”
Sanders did the young man a solid, granting him another year he could spend developing in BoCo — or anywhere else Lewis wants to go, given the state of the transfer portal.
Ju Ju’s come a long way from that skinny kid we saw running for his life during the spring game. He’s still skinny. He’s still a kid. But those routes to wideout Omarion Miller looked downright telepathic at times. The more reps he got, the more he flashed.
And that upward trajectory can’t be understated. If he’s true to his word about staying a Buff, Lewis becomes the test case, the one who’s going to show us if another QB can develop as quickly — and as soundly — as Shedeur did under his father.
If once was genetics, twice is a pattern. The kind of pattern you can rebuild a program around.
“You’ve competed in every arena,” Coach Prime was told Tuesday during his midweek regular-season news conference. “You don’t have much left to prove, personally, I don’t think …”
“That’s not true,” Sanders interjected.
He’s yet to prove that there’s another level here. That his CU teams can close. That all that CFP talk isn’t just … talk. That the Buffs’ peak moments, that those peak feelings — think Baylor, 2024 — can be maintained and not veer, like a roller-coaster ride, up and down the standings from year to year. That CU can be consistent at something other than being remarkably inconsistent. That there’s life after Shedeur. Life and a passing game.
Sanders is most comfortable following what he knows best — NFL standards, NFL schemes, NFL mantras, NFL coaches, NFL lineage. To his credit, he’s adapted. He’s rebounded.
But the Big 12 and the No Fun League have this much in common: In either case, you’ll soar only as high as your coach and QB, in tandem, can take you. That’s something Buffs fans have been learning the hard way. One cruel week at a time.
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