BOULDER – Colorado football returns to Folsom Field Saturday in search of its first Big 12 win of the season, hosting No. 22 Iowa State (1:30 p.m. MT/ESPN). The game will be the Buffaloes’ fourth in Big 12 play, but the team doesn’t feel the 0-3 record is fully representative of the play on the field.
Colorado has had leads in two of its three conference games and has been within reach in all three games so far this season. The Buffs held 14-0 leads against both BYU and TCU, but have ultimately ended up on the short end of the equation in their last two contests.
“I see what you see,” head coach Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders expressed after the loss at TCU. “This is no disrespect to TCU, because they are well-coached. They did a wonderful job, and the quarterback made plays. But I feel like we’re the better team. I felt like that last week [vs BYU] and the week before [vs Wyoming]. But yet and still, we’re in this situation.”
Turning the page over from TCU and looking ahead at Iowa State, Coach Prime believes that his Buffaloes have what it takes to get into the win column. They just need to eliminate the self-inflicted mistakes.
“We’re playing good football except for a couple of quarters,” Coach Prime noted on Tuesday. “Defensively, the third quarters haven’t been kind. Offensively, coming back out of halftime as well hasn’t been kind. The first two quarters, we played pretty decent football. Second quarter, we have to do a lot better. But the reason I’m still excited about this team that just finished practicing is because I don’t feel like we’ve gotten our butt kicked.
“I feel like we’ve just wrapped it up and given it to them. That’s frustrating, but also, there’s hope in that. We see where we are messing up. We see where the faults are, and we have to fix that. There’s truly optimism, and I’m sure you see the same darn thing. Like, ‘Dang, here we go again,’ Like, we’re right there. We’re not a bad football team. I’m not saying we’re a great football team, but we’re not a bad football team. We’re better than we’re playing.”
It’s not just talk; there are plenty of numbers to back it up.
Colorado’s running game has vastly improved this season, with the Buffs posting five games with over 100 yards on the ground. Before this season, Colorado had just six 100-yard rushing games in the previous 25 games, with four in 2024 and two in 2023. The Buffs have posted consecutive games of 193, 12 and 126 yards rushing, marking the first three-game stretch with 100 yards in the Coach Prime era.
Dallan Hayden had two 20-yard carries in his 9-rush, 61-yard performance at TCU. The Buffs now have 12 rushes this season over 20 yards, more than the total in the previous two seasons combined. CU had six such rushes in 2024 and five in 2023.
The Buffs have had four different leading rushers in the team’s six games so far this season.
On the defensive side, Saturday was the fourth time the Buffs have held a Big 12 opponent under 3.0 yards per carry since the start of last season. That number is tied with BYU for the most in the conference. Colorado had won 11 in a row before the TCU game, when not allowing 3.0+ yards per carry.
“We don’t want to just hang in [close games],” Coach Prime explained. “We want to win. [We’re] close. Not far away. I mean, really close. I’m not talking about with binoculars that we can see it. I’m talking about close. We can darn near touch it. That’s how close we are.”
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Written by Seth Pringle, University of Colorado Athletic Communications. Content courtesy of The University of Colorado.