Did Colorado's collapse against Stanford blow up the Buffs' bowl hopes for 2023?

Colorado was up 29-0 against lowly Stanford at halftime with the ball to start the third quarter, so I turned off the TV and went to bed. 

I’d seen enough. 

Colorado is playing with its hair on fire tonight, which is exactly the performance you hoped to see from Deion Sanders' team against an undermanned foe.

Beat Stanford and the Buffs are a team that is eyeing a bowl game, which would be a remarkable turnaround in Year 1.

— Jesse Simonton (@JesseReSimonton) October 14, 2023

Two-way star Travis Hunter looked smooth in his return to the field, especially his spin-cycle catch-and-run score for the first touchdown of his career with the Buffs. Shedeur Sanders was cooking (three first-half TDs) and Colorado’s porous defense actually held the Cardinal to just 115 total yards. 

Aside from some general sloppiness (eight penalties for 69 yards), there were zero signs that Colorado was about to cough up its biggest lead in school history. 

“From youth on, I don’t remember being up 29-0 and losing a football game,” coach Deion Sanders said afterward. 

“I really don’t. This is a little tough for me.”

Well, thank goodness for replay.

I relived Colorado’s calamitous collapse Saturday morning, where Stanford scored five straight touchdowns in the second half (with multiple two-point conversions) to eventually force overtime and win 46-43. Cardinals wideout Eric Aymanor set a school record with 294 receiving yards — doing a lot of his damage against Hunter (7 catches for 133 yards and two scores, per PFF) — including a ridiculous ‘Mossing of Hunter in overtime to tie the game.

Afterward, Coach Prime did his best Miss Cleo impersonation, saying he felt an unease heading into halftime up four scores, but if true, Sanders had no answers to make sure his team didn’t turn off the engine.

STANFORD COMPLETES THE COMEBACK 😳 pic.twitter.com/FmvYALO0VC

— ESPN (@espn) October 14, 2023

“I talked to them about the old cliche people say it’s 0-0 but that’s not true. It’s not 0-0, it’s 29-0,” he said. 

“I felt complacency going into the half because we stalled offensively, gave up some yardage as well. Just didn’t like how I felt going in at halftime. We come back out and here comes complacency. Here comes that team that I can’t stand, that you can’t stand it. You can’t understand how in the world that happens to us. But it did.”

While Colorado’s slow-motion meltdown “happened” over two quarters in the seance half, it was culminated by Sanders’ continued bizarre overtime strategy where he wants Colorado’s offense to get the ball first. Despite the Buffs’ defense showing less resistance than Stormtroopers in the second half (408 yards, 5 of 7 conversions on third down), Sanders had the Buffs take the ball first in the opening overtime. 

They scored, but the Cardinal answered immediately, so when Shedeur Sanders threw a terrible pick on the opening possession of the second overtime, the game was probably over. It’s a terrible strategy, and it blew up in Sanders’ face. 

Now the question is have the Buffs’ bowl hopes blown up, too? There’s no schadenfreude here. It’s more of a question of curiosity. 

Colorado has been the story of college football in 2023. The program has made a remarkable turnaround in Deion Sanders’s first season in Boulder. Their defense is awful (36 points per game allowed), and yet, they’ve found ways to win games with enough offensive firepower to score on most Pac-12 defenses. 

But the Buffs were also a team with zero margin for error. They had a preseason win total of 4 for a reason — they lack depth and defensive talent. 

Friday’s meltdown might’ve cost them more than just a fifth win. It might’ve cost them 15 practices in December that this program desperately needs. Bye-bye to more primetime TV spots for Deion Sanders & Co., too. 

ESPN’s FPI gives Colorado, now 4-3, a 36% chance to reach six wins, but from this vantage point, that seems awfully optimistic when you look at the Buffs’ remaining schedule. 

You have to squint to find two wins here:

at No. 18 UCLA

No. 15 Oregon State

Arizona

at No. 19 Washington State

at No. 16 Utah

The Buffs will be double-digit ‘dogs in at least four of those games, and while Arizona is the lone unranked team remaining on the slate, the Wildcats have played Washington and USC (two losses by nine total points) tougher than any team in the country this season thus far. 

The Buffs must now stew with this outcome for two weeks. Can they come out of their idle date and shock the world again like they did in Week 1?

They better, or else they look like they’ll be home for the holidays in Sanders’ first season — which at midnight Eastern on Friday night seemed unlikely. 

“We can’t sit down having a pity party,” Sanders said. 

“I don’t feel bad for us. Some of y’all are ecstatic about what transpired today. And I know that, but let’s go. We’re gonna take this one on the chin because we deserve it.”