Pat Shurmur opens up on Colorado's culture

Pat Shurmur was recently brought onto the Colorado staff as an offensive analyst. He raved about the football program’s culture under Deion Sanders in Year 1.

Sanders already raved about his staff and their accomplishments and Shurmur seemingly returned the favor about what he walked into. A former NFL head coach, Shurmur may be a smaller part of the staff, but he came to Boulder for a reason.

Sanders certainly did his vetting of the veteran coach.

“You’re always trying to establish a winning culture,” Shurmur said. “When you have a leader of your team like Coach Prime, who’s won at everything’s done in life, that’s where it starts. And so I think if parents, players and the people around him just listen to what he’s saying, you know, and take his message to heart and it’ll all start to blossom.

“Then we’ll win football games and then we can start talking more about what the culture looks like.”

But what exactly does an analyst do, and what are the former NFL head coach’s responsibilities on a day-to-day basis? According to Shurmur, his responsibilities are more behind the scenes at Colorado than anything else.

“As you know, being an analyst, I work primarily behind the scenes. So I’m in the meeting room with the coaches,” Shurmur said. “I’m really not allowed to have one-on-ones with players. It’s really hard to be out there and bite your tongue when you see something. But if there is something that I see that might help a player, I gotta just track it through one of the coaches.”

But overall, as Shurmur alluded to, he’s a part of a culture that could a “winning culture” very soon. 

“These guys are really good,” Sanders said. “I’ve been talking about them since I got here. They’re really good, they’re really successful … I think the best thing we’ve put together has been the staff. These guys are really good from top to bottom. Also the GAs, they’re doing a phenomenal job as well. The coordinators speak volumes.”

Sanders proceeded to reel off the accomplishments and stats of his full time assistant coaches going into the year.

“The collective experience of the 10 full time assistant coaches and analyst, it amounts to 294 years of coaching. 93 seasons at the power five level, six have college or pro head coaches with 30 years experience amongst them,” Sanders said.

Winning Colorado culture? It’s there on paper right now. But it’s up to the Buffaloes to prove it to the rest of the nation.