Colorado coach Deion Sanders says last year's team had 'dead eyes', happy with progress

Colorado football coach Deion Sanders gave an update on the progress of his team Friday and said players from last year’s team had “dead eyes” and “didn’t love football,” leading him to overhaul the roster because it “had to be done.”

Sanders was hired in early December and since has overturned his roster to an unprecedented degree with nearly 70 new scholarship players and just 10 scholarship players returning from last year’s team out of a limit of 85. In his first team meeting in December, Sanders warned his inherited players he would set a higher standard and try to make them quit after they finished 1-11 in 2022.

Now he’s just three weeks away from his debut as the Buffaloes’ head coach – Sept. 2 at TCU.

“It was tremendously tough, because you had some young men that just didn’t want to play the game,” he said at a preseason news conference on campus Friday. “They didn't love football. It’s hard for me to be effective if you don’t love it, if you don’t like it, if you don’t want to live it. That’s tough. That’s tremendously tough, when you’re looking at a body of just dead eyes, that’s tough on any coach, not just me. I’m pretty sure a multitude of coaches have experienced that until they can clean house and get the roster that they want. It was tremendously challenging day by day. I’m happy with what I’m seeing every morning now. I really am.”

On Friday he said every position group has improved by “leaps and bounds.”

“I feel like we’ve gotten better tremendously all over the board,” he said.

His sons are leading the way

His team still has plenty of doubters. The Buffaloes are a 20-point underdog at TCU and have been picked to finish 11th out of 12 teams in the Pac-12 Conference by the media who cover the league.

“Coming in with a whole new roster, it’s actually good, because it’s like really, just really a fair shot to be on the same level,” said Sanders’ son, Shilo, a safety on the Colorado team. “All you have to do is go in and learn what to do. Like say if you were on the team where they already had guys go crazy the year before, it’s going to be a little bit harder to go in and do your thing.”

Shilo Sanders is expected to be a leader on the defense this year as graduate transfer from Jackson State, where his father coached from 2020 to 2022 with a 27-6 record. On offense, Sanders’ youngest son Shedeur is the undisputed No. 1 quarterback after also transferring from Jackson State. They are among 46 new four-year transfers on the team, as of June 30.

Their father on Friday also wanted to make clear how good Shedeur is as a signal caller after a reporter prefaced a question about the backup quarterbacks by noting the Buffs were “set” with Shedeur as the No. 1 QB.

 “It’s not like we’re set with Shedeur,” said Deion Sanders, a Pro Football Hall of Famer. “I think he’s earned the right to be the guy behind the center. That’s why I’m set with him.”

Deion Sanders said the team was still “unsatisfied” with the backups because “it’s tough to satisfy us.”

“If by God, God please let don’t it happen, but if something happens with Shedeur – I don’t think he’s ever missed a game with me,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to find that guy that we can trust. He’s in-house. We’ve just got to develop him.”

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What's changed the most?

The few holdover players from last year have noticed the differences more than the many newcomers.

“It’s a whole different vibe,” safety Trevor Woods said earlier this week. “We’re bringing a winning culture here.”

Woods is one of those 10 returning scholarship players from a program that had only two winning seasons in the past 17 years. The newcomers "respect us for sticking it out," said Woods, a junior who started nine games in 2022.

Even when Sanders told last year's players in December that he was bringing his own luxury luggage with him to potentially replace them, Woods said he didn’t flinch.

Woods said he was “ready to compete with whoever he brings in. It didn’t matter to me really.”

Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com