Shedeur Sanders explains how he focused on football during his father's medical issues
Colorado head coach Deion Sanders spend some time in the hospital last month, which meant he was away from the team for an extended period of time. That meant his son, Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders, was without his father on the field for the first time in his collegiate career.
Losing your head coach to an extended hospital stay is never easy on a team heading into fall camp, but when the coach doubles as your father, Shedeur had every right to take his mind off football for the time being. Instead, he took it in stride and continued to lead the Buffs’ charge.
It sounds bold on Shedeur’s part, but in the lead-up to his father’s surgery, he was simply unaware of Coach Prime’s immediate procedure, which made it easy not to worry.
“Because he’s had surgery before, he didn’t make it seem like a big deal to us,” Shedeur said. “He didn’t let us know [he was having surgery]. He didn’t really tell us until someone called me to tell me he was having surgery the next day. I really didn’t know until the next day.”
The surgery was to remove blood clots from his leg. Some initial reports noted that the worst-case scenario for Sanders in that situation would be to amputate the limb. That turned out to be far from the truth after he set the record straight.
“I met with my doctors a week ago, got hammer toes in two toes, and they want to straighten those out,” Sanders told fans on social media. “I’m not receiving enough blood flow in order to do that surgery and another surgery to fix the dislocation of the foot, as well. So this is where we are now.
“There is no talk of amputation. There’s no talk of any of that whatsoever. The doctors were just telling me worse come to worse, this was going to happen, but I believe in staying right so we never have to take that left.”
Sanders also revealed why his son, and team, were unaware of the procedure until the 12th hour. After some ongoing pain in his legs, Sanders went to the doctor to get it checked out. They found two blood clots; one in his left leg and another in his right. They went ahead and scheduled the procedure for the following day. Sanders himself wasn’t aware until the day before, so it only makes sense for his son not to know.