Deion Sanders tried benching, booting and motivating. None of it saved Colorado vs Baylor
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Colorado football coach Deion Sanders kicked three players off the team, changed his quarterback again and even made his best players stand up to address the team in a pregame meeting a day earlier.
None of it worked. The Buffaloes lost at Baylor 23-13 on Saturday, Sept. 26. They are now 2-2 heading into a homecoming game against Texas Tech on Oct. 3. But Sanders had a statement to make afterward.
“It seems as though we’re better than our opponents, but the score does not dictate that,” Sanders said after the game in Waco, Texas. “And that’s the fascinating thing about it. We gotta find out why.”
Sanders said this last year, too, when his team finished 3-9. He believed his team was better than some teams that beat his Buffaloes.
"We're better than this," he said.
So then why is Colorado 2-12 against Power Four conference teams since 2024?
It starts at quarterback. Sanders benched starter Julian “JuJu” Lewis at halftime, when the Buffaloes trailed, 10-3.
“It was a decision that I made, because I was trying to get us going,” Sanders said.
'Stop being scared'
Lewis, 19, was supposed to be the answer for Sanders at a position that’s struggled since Sanders’ son Shedeur left the team after the 2024 season, when the Buffs finished 9-4. Lewis instead has looked lost at times, triggering frustration with his offensive coordinator, Brennan Marion.
“Stop being scared,” Marion appeared to tell Lewis in the first half.
Lewis completed 11 of 16 passes for 75 yards before getting replaced by Isaac Wilson in the second half. Wilson, a transfer from Utah, threw a 17-yard touchdown pass to receiver Joseph Williams with 11:04 left, helping tie the score at 13-13.
But Baylor quarterback DJ Lagway then showed what Colorado has been missing. He threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to receiver Jadon Porter on the next possession, followed by a drive ending with a 54-yard field goal to account for the final score. Baylor improved to 3-1 in front of 40,015 at McLane Stadium.
Deion Sanders addresses player dismissals
The quarterback change wasn’t the only big news at Colorado this week. Sanders kicked three players off the team after a 41-7 loss at Northwestern last week. He downplayed the move after the game Saturday and declined to identify the players.
“This is not the first time that we excused players off the team,” Sanders said. "That has happened every year, every single year, and I don’t think we the only ones. I’m sorry. I’m old-school. I’m gonna pay you to act a fool?”
Sanders also said he had the team’s top players get up at a team meeting Friday and say what they needed to do individually for the team to succeed.
“They got up there and said what they needed to do,” Sanders said. “And I told them I was gonna hold them to that.”
Deion Sanders says to not give up on Julian Lewis
Now Sanders will have to try to avoid letting this season slide down the drain like it did last year and in 2023, when the Buffs started 3-0 before finishing 4-8.
It doesn’t help that one of the Buffs’ best defensive players, linebacker Tyler Martinez, suffered a leg injury Saturday.
Sanders also said he didn’t know yet what he would do at quarterback next week.
“Don’t give up on JuJu,” Sanders told reporters. “You guys, don’t do that. Don’t give up on JuJu. That kid, he plays with tremendous effort and tremendous heart. He’s not quitting, and he’s not abandoning anybody. We just needed the change. We needed an inspiration at that time, some kind of way.”
Sanders is in his fourth season at Colorado and has a cumulative record of 18-23.
“There’s a lot of things pulling us apart as a team right now,” Colorado linebacker Liona Lefau said afterward. “Not some. You know, it’s not going as planned for our team. Obviously our plan was go to 4-0. And we’re 2-2. So this is the time where we really got to stick together.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Deion Sanders tried benching, booting and motivating. None of it saved Colorado vs Baylor
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