Joel Klatt breaks down Shedeur Sanders, why he has such a small margin of error

Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders has announced himself as one of the best players in college football. There’s a lot of pressure that comes with that, though, as evidenced by FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt.

Klatt broke down Sanders’ latest performance against No. 8 USC on his show this week. He started by reminding everyone of just how high he is on No. 2 out in Boulder.

“He is one of the best players in college football, he’s one of the best quarterbacks in college football,” Klatt said of Sanders. “His touch, his accuracy – he’s tremendous. I love watching him play, we’ve gotten to do it three times now.”

However, that’s when the criticism then began. With how Colorado is constructed, they need the best out of Sanders each and every snap which, against the Trojans, he did not think that they got during the final drive of the game considering how long that it took to manufacture.

“Having said that, the margin for error for him is so small because of how perfect he has to play, in particular after he’s down,” Klatt added.

“The mistakes came in game and situational awareness. The clock management at the end wasn’t where it needed it be. That’s obvious and, by the way, he took the blame for that.”

Colorado was facing a 14-point deficit when they got the football back with under six minutes to go. Sanders and the Buffalo offense then burned over four minutes off the clock with a 10-play drive that included four run plays.

While they did bring it within seven points with a touchdown, the time management made the clock their enemy. All it took then was a failed onside kick and that was all she wrote for Colorado against their second straight Top-10 opponent.

For Klatt, he saw that as a negative from both the coaching staff as well as Sanders. It put his slim margin on display and was an example of what Klatt would like to see him and the Buffaloes improve on moving forward.

“The failure comes in here in two parts,” Klatt said. “One is, from a coaching staff, you’ve got to tell your team, and your quarterback, that it is a two-minute situation and then all the rules in a two-minute situation apply…Number two, even if you’re not running your two-minute offense, as a quarterback, you’ve got to know that you can’t change the play and you can’t take that long. You just can’t.

“That’s situational failure. It comes from the quarterback and the coaching staff. Those are the areas that they have to get better in moving forward.”