On Thursday, Colorado coach Deion Sanders called starting a game at 8:20 p.m. MT (10:20 p.m. ET) the “stupidest thing ever.” Something even more stupefying happened as the late-night game against Stanford unfolded.
Colorado blew a 29-0 lead and lost in double overtime, 46-43.
It was the biggest blown lead in school history; in 2010, Colorado squandered a 28-0 lead at Kansas.
“I talked to them about the old cliche people say -- it’s 0-0 but that’s not true,” Sanders said after the game. “It’s not 0-0, it’s 29-nothing. 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. . . .
“From youth on, I don’t remember being up 29-0 and losing a football game. I really don’t. This is a little tough for me. . . . We have no choice but to go forward. That’s life. We didn’t expect that. . . . We can’t sit down and have no pity party.”
The party was happening in the visiting locker room, where Stanford celebrated the end of a seven-game losing streak within the fracturing Pac-12 conference.
Along the way, receiver Elic Ayomanor set a Stanford record with 294 receiving yards in the game. His 97-yard catch and run on the second Stanford drive of the second half, which cut the margin to 29-12, might have been the turning point in the game.
Stanford tied the game at 36 on a 46-yard Joshua Karty field goal as time expired; the drive started on the Stanford one. The two teams traded touchdowns in the first overtime period. In the second overtime, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders threw an interception in the end zone. Karty clinched the win with a 31-yard field goal.
The loss take plenty of air out of the Coach Prime balloon. Whatever happens the rest of the way for the 4-3 team, the blowing of a 29-0 lead is something that will be indelible on the experience that is the 2023 Colorado Buffaloes, and Deion’s first year coaching big-time college football.
And there could be valuable lessons to be learned by Sanders, beyond the importance of eliminating perceived complacency of his players. There’s a chance Deion got a little complacent, too.
Remember the USC game, in which poor clock management on offense made it impossible for Colorado to tie the game in the fourth quarter? Chances are that closer scrutiny of the third quarter will reveal that Deion failed to bleed as much of the clock as possible, limiting the time Stanford had to mount SIX successful second-half scoring drive.
For example, on the first drive of the second half, Colorado received the opening kickoff, ran nine plays, and somehow only took two minutes and 51 seconds off the clock. Another nine-play drive later in the quarter accounted for only 3:21 of clock time.
That’s the challenge going forward for Deion and the Buffaloes. They can chalk the wacky outcome up to “shit happens.” Or they can do a deep dive into what happened to make an easy win go to shit, so that it won’t happen again.
