Deion Sanders Confesses Colorado Got “Intoxicated With Success” Following Kansas Game Loss

The Colorado Buffaloes entered Week 13 riding a four-game winning streak. They’re headed home for their regular season finale on a sour note, though, after losing 37-21 to the Kansas Jayhawks, who made history in their triumph.

Following Saturday’s defeat, head coach Deion Sanders applauded Jayhawks head coach Lance Leipold for keeping his team resilient through a 2-6 start.

He then admitted his team got out over their skis looking forward to possible championship contests instead of taking things one week at a time.

“We started smelling ourselves a little bit. That’s what I just told our team. We got intoxicated with success. We got intoxicated with the multitude of articles and assumption that we’re this and assumption that we’re that, and we did not play C-U football. Therefore, we got our butts kicked.”

The Buffs (8-3) now need to knock off Oklahoma State and get help to reach the Big 12 Championship and have any chance of stealing a College Football Playoff bid.

Colorado’s biggest names had some impressive individual showings against Kansas, but their production wasn’t enough to achieve victory. Their efforts were outdone largely because of the Buffs’ inability to stop the Jayhawks’ ground game.

Kansas’ rushing attack dominated Colorado’s run defense

Leipold’s offensive game plan was tremendously effective on Saturday. The Jayhawks churned out 331 rushing yards versus the Buffaloes. Their 6.1 yards per carry average – on 55 attempts – helped them more than double Colorado’s time of possession (40:11-19:49). Running back Devin Neal had 41 touches, on which he posted 287 total yards and four touchdowns.

Kansas may have been wearing blue during the game, but they left Colorado feeling that way afterward. Their physicality overwhelmed the Buffs. Sanders noted as much in his postgame press conference.

“We’ve gotta do something… they didn’t punt one time. Their 331 rushing yards was alarming. You can’t win when a team rushes for 331 yards on you.  That’s not indicative of who we’ve been, and who we are… we’ve tried consistently, but we could not stop the bleeding. That’s hats off to them… they outplayed us. They wanted it a lot more than we did.”

The Buffs don’t have much time to find solutions or lick their wounds. They are back in action on Friday instead of Saturday this upcoming week. A loss to the Oklahoma State Cowboys would end their College Football Playoff hopes. A win, plus losses by two of Arizona State, BYU or Iowa State, would push them into the Big 12 Championship game.