Stanford Steve confident Colorado can make bowl game in 2024

While it might not comport with the talking and expectations set forth by those around Colorado football, a 6-6 season and a bowl berth would be quite the success. It was only two years ago in 2022 that this team posted a 1-11 record.

And while the roster has had plenty of turnover, again, during the second offseason under head coach Deion Sanders, ESPN’s “Stanford Steve” Coughlin expects that the Buffaloes will be bowl-bound in 2024. He explained his thinking with On3’s Andy Staples this week.

“Now, the experience those kids got. The spotlight that they were under after that Week 1 win, they — nothing’s going to be bigger than that, to me,” Coughlin said. “Now that they’re going to the Big 12, which is going to be the most competitive league in the country and I’m pretty firm in that, where I think a multitude of teams can win it. But when you still have a quarterback like that, that got that experience, and all those kids that got that experience, I think that helps immensely with managing your expectations.”

Coughlin also thinks a progression from quarterback Shedeur Sanders in how he handles pressure could also pay dividends for Colorado’s success. He also heaped praise on offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, who he believes will help the quarterback in that regard.

“What I do look at is, having played for him, his offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur,” Coughlin said. “I think he’s great in the role, especially in college, of having to game plan. I think that’s going to help Shedeur a ton. What he was able to do, when you talk about pocket presence, I would put him right up there with Caleb Williams. And how he had to run for his life and still to be able to be accurate showed me wonders at the beginning of the season. And I get, I know what happened later in the year. But that’s what we’re going to see with these teams changing conferences.”

The final, harder-to-guess piece of the puzzle is how Colorado fits into the new-look Big 12 in 2024.

Coughlin thinks it’s quite possible that Colorado could look strong in the league, albeit against a tough relative schedule.

“Deion is going to Deion,” Coughlin said. “He is going to put everything on him and take it to a level that no one else could go. But that’s been him his whole life. There are plenty of conversations he has had with his team where, ‘Things got out of hand last year.’ And they’re going to learn from that, and they will learn from that. So I look at the schedule, the schedule’s crazy to me. Because you could — I can’t wait to see the point spreads on these games because I think every game is winnable. I really do.”