Deion Sanders evaluates offensive playcalling, addresses change before Week 10

Ahead of Week 10, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders decided to shake up his coaching staff, taking playcalling duties away from Sean Lewis and giving them to analyst Pat Shurmur. The exact reason for the move wasn’t clear, with the offense playing well overall, but clearly Sanders wanted to spark the team.

In the short term, the move didn’t work, with Colorado dropping its fifth game out of the last six. For most of the game, the Buffaloes offense was stuck in first gear against a talented Oregon State team. After the game, Sanders broke down what he saw from the playcalling.

“It has so much to do, and that’s a great question, but it’s not just that. It’s that and execution of the play that’s called,” Deion Sanders said. “It’s that and timing of the play that’s called. It’s that and the thought process behind these calls.”

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“It’s a lot that goes behind that. You guys are just seeing what you see. You’re missing a whole lot of intangibles that transpired for us to be in this situation right now.”

Colorado ended the game against Oregon State with 19 points, including two points that came off a botched Beavers two-point try. It wasn’t until the fourth quarter that the offense found the endzone and Colorado gained more than half of its yards for the game.

That poor performance begged the question, what did Shurmur give Colorado that Lewis didn’t?

“We’re not going to demean Sean Lewis, here. We’re not gonna do that, we’re not gonna take that tone. Sean is a good man, I think he’s a good playcaller,” Sanders said.

“We just needed change at the time. We just needed to try something else at the time. That’s what we did and I don’t look back on it, I don’t second guess myself whatsoever because there’s more to it than what you may know. So, let’s just trust the process. Let’s just trust the process. Sean is a, we’re not going to demean any coach on this staff by any means. I don’t get down like that, I don’t move like that.”

Sean Lewis was the head coach at Kent State prior to taking the offensive coordinator job at Colorado. Landing a sitting head coach was a big deal for Deion Sanders and was widely seen as his best hire. That’s part of why the change in playcalling duties was such a huge surprise to many people.

Still, Sanders wasn’t interested in sharing his thought process behind the move.

“I’m not going to disclose all my thoughts, man. I mean, my thoughts are my thoughts. I’m not going to disclose when I make a decision to do something. Just know I made a decision and I don’t stumble or stutter or stutter on it, and I’m not looking back, it is what it is and that’s what it’s gonna be,” Sanders said.

“I made a decision to help this team win. You guys don’t know all the intangibles in it, you just from the outside of the crib looking in. I got tinted windows and you can’t even see in the house but you’re making conclusions on what I should or should not do.”

Colorado fell to 4-5 with the loss to Oregon State. The offense is going to need to step up in a major way for next week, with the Buffaloes hosting the Arizona Wildcats.

Deion Sanders admits Colorado is missing passion

One issue that Deion Sanders has run into this season is that he feels the team’s passion is waning as the season goes on.

“I don’t think it’s the same passion. I do sense the same attention to detail, the film time has gone up. Less mistakes. I think penalty wise we had some penalties in some crazy situations. But we’ve condensed that over the last couple of weeks. We’ve been pretty good with that. It’s just some little foolish darn penalties that we gathered today,” Sanders said.

“But the passion, the passion of it, like the passion of that first game, the passion of those games, we’re missing that and that’s still something we’re trying to apprehend. We try to locate it as well.”