Deion Sanders is not the type to walk into a room and whisper. So when he stood in front of reporters and said something as blunt as “We’re pretty darn good” about his Colorado coaching staff, it landed like a challenge. The Buffaloes head coach was talking specifically about the five assistant coaches on his payroll who have already been head coaches themselves. That stat came from Brett McMurphy of On3 Sports, and it tells you something about how Sanders is approaching this rebuild.
Colorado is coming off a 3-9 season. That is not a typo. After the high of 2024 when they looked like a program on the rise, last year was a flop. Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter left for the NFL. The replacements never really showed up. And the Buffaloes spent the winter watching other teams play bowl games while they sat at home.
The transfer portal is where this thing gets fixed
Sanders and his staff have been grinding the transfer portal and the high school recruiting trail harder than most programs. They have to. The talent gap showed up in ugly ways last season. Close losses turned into blowouts. Confidence faded. But Sanders has never lacked belief in his own ability to turn a roster around, and he is leaning hard into the experience around him. Having five former head coaches on staff is unusual. Most programs have one or two. Colorado has five guys who have run their own show before. That kind of institutional knowledge does not hurt when you are trying to plug holes in a roster that lost its two best players.
Fans will get their first real test of whether this staff can pull it together on September 3. That is when Colorado opens the season against Georgia Tech in a rematch of last year’s narrow home loss. That game stung. The Buffaloes had chances and could not finish. Now they get a shot at payback in Atlanta with what Sanders believes is a smarter, more experienced coaching group behind him.
Nobody is talking about a national title yet
The goal for 2026 is simpler than that. Colorado needs to get to six wins. Bowl eligibility. Respectability. Sanders burst onto the scene three years ago with that road win over TCU, the team that played for the national championship the year before. It was electric. But the program has not found that same magic since. Injuries, roster turnover, and the natural chaos of college football in the transfer portal era have made consistency hard. Sanders knows that. He also knows that if anyone can sell a comeback story, it is him.
“We’re pretty darn good” is not a promise of a championship. It is a statement of belief from a coach who has never had trouble backing up his words before. Whether the 2026 Buffaloes prove him right or wrong starts in September against a Georgia Tech team that already knows it can beat them.
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