Opinion: The Buffs have the pieces. So why can’t they put them together?

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There are plenty of reasonable explanations for Colorado football’s uneven start to the season. The Buffaloes have a young quarterback, a new offense under Brennan Marion, two new coordinators and a roster that entered the year with 43 transfers. With that much turnover, some early inconsistency was always likely.

Still, four games into the season, Colorado’s most concerning problem is not that it looks incapable of competing. In many ways, that would be easier to explain. Instead, CU has repeatedly shown enough talent to stay competitive before undermining itself with penalties, turnovers, stalled drives, poor field position and lapses in composure.

The Buffs opened the year with a 14-13 win at Georgia Tech and followed it with a 52-21 victory over Weber State. Since then, they have lost 41-7 to Northwestern and 23-13 to Baylor. The Baylor loss may have captured the problem best. Colorado outgained the Bears 363-337, recorded more first downs and held the ball longer, yet still lost by 10. At some point, consistently producing enough yardage to compete but not enough complete football to win becomes more than bad luck. It becomes part of a team’s identity.

Discipline is becoming a pattern

Before the season, Sanders described this team as smart, tough, fast and “extremely disciplined.” Four games later, that last description has become difficult to reconcile with what has happened on the field.

Colorado has committed 37 penalties for 329 yards. CU was flagged six times against Georgia Tech, 13 times against Weber State and nine times in each of its last two games. The Weber State performance showed how easy those mistakes were to overlook when the offense was producing 52 points. Against better competition, the same habits have become much more costly.

Boo Carter has become one of the clearest examples of that contradiction. He has also made one of Colorado’s biggest plays of the year, blocking Georgia Tech’s potential game-winning field goal in the final seconds, and he remains an important part of the secondary.

Against Northwestern, however, Carter received an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty after appearing to throw a punch during an altercation late in the first half. The penalty extended a Wildcats possession that eventually ended in a touchdown, sending Colorado into halftime down 21-0. Sanders later used Carter while addressing the team about controlling its behavior.

One week later against Baylor, Carter was involved in another heated confrontation and appeared to attempt another punch at an opposing player. He was not penalized, and it was unclear whether the swing made contact, but the similarity between the two incidents is difficult to ignore. One emotional reaction can happen in a physical sport. Seeing a nearly identical response the following week, after the first became a public lesson about composure, raises a larger question about whether the message is actually translating to the field.

Carter should not become the scapegoat for everything wrong with Colorado. His play has often been an asset. That is exactly why his situation reflects the team so well: CU has players capable of making game-changing plays, but too often those positive moments are followed by unnecessary mistakes that give something back.

The chemistry questions go beyond penalties

Colorado’s concerns are not limited to what happens between the whistles. After the Northwestern loss, Sanders announced that three players had been removed from the team for conduct detrimental to the group. He described the decision as the result of a pattern rather than one isolated incident and acknowledged that he had allowed similar issues to linger too long last season.

The dismissals came after Sanders expressed frustration with players laughing as the team left the field following a 41-7 loss. Veteran safety Ben Finneseth also publicly apologized after pregame comments he made about Northwestern’s temporary stadium drew attention. Finneseth called his own behavior childish and said he needed to be more mature.

Even the communication around those dismissals became unnecessarily confusing. Sanders publicly said three players were no longer with the program, while Colorado later said potential roster changes had not yet been finalized and that an updated roster would follow. That does not change the underlying discipline issue, but the conflicting messages created uncertainty around a situation that already involved questions about the direction of the locker room. A program trying to establish accountability also benefits from being clear about what that accountability actually looks like.

None of those incidents individually proves Colorado has a fractured locker room, but taken together, they make chemistry and accountability legitimate questions. There are encouraging signs too. Linebacker Tyler Martinez has spoken publicly about the need for CU to come together, and Sanders said team leaders approached him wanting to know how they could help address problems before another teammate reached the point of being removed.

That matters on a roster with 43 transfers. Players arrived from different programs, conferences and locker-room cultures, then had one offseason to establish relationships, leadership and expectations. Sanders praised that leadership before the season and said players had even established their own film-study requirements. The challenge now is showing that those standards hold when things go wrong.

There is also a larger tension built into the culture Sanders has created. Colorado has openly embraced individual branding and NIL opportunities, including practice jerseys featuring players’ social-media handles rather than their last names. There is nothing inherently wrong with helping players build personal brands in modern college football, but when the program is simultaneously confronting questions about players putting themselves ahead of the group, it is fair to ask how successfully CU is balancing individual visibility with a collective identity. The jerseys do not cause chemistry problems, but they are a visible reminder that Colorado has to make personal branding and team-first accountability coexist.

Georgia Tech remains Colorado’s best example of that kind of complementary response. The offense struggled for much of the night before Julian Lewis led a late touchdown drive. The defense then allowed Georgia Tech into field-goal range, only for Carter to block the potential winner. One group struggled and another picked it up. Colorado has not consistently replicated that since.

Confidence has to be supported by results

The Northwestern game also raised questions about whether confidence has occasionally gotten ahead of execution. The pregame comments about Northwestern’s stadium looked considerably worse after a 34-point loss. That does not mean players should stop being confident or talking competitively. Confidence is part of football. But CU went 3-9 last season and is still trying to establish itself as a consistent winner, so the Buffs are not yet in a position where any opponent should be treated casually.

That same caution applies to some of the excitement surrounding Julian “JuJu” Lewis. Lewis showed why Colorado believes in him against Weber State, completing 17 of 23 passes for 366 yards and four touchdowns. The performance immediately raised expectations, but the last two weeks have provided a reminder that his development is still happening.

Lewis threw two interceptions against Northwestern and then produced 75 passing yards in the first half against Baylor before being replaced by Isaac Wilson. That does not make Lewis a bad quarterback, nor does it erase what he has already shown. He is young, learning a new offense and playing one of the most demanding positions on the field.

The issue is less that Lewis himself is overconfident and more that the hype surrounding him has sometimes moved faster than his development. Quarterbacking is not only about making explosive throws when an offense is comfortable. It is also about handling pressure, responding after mistakes, sustaining drives and providing stability when everyone around you is struggling. Lewis has demonstrated flashes of those qualities, particularly during the late drive at Georgia Tech. Colorado now needs to see them more consistently.

Brennan Marion has to turn flashes into a complete offense

Lewis should not carry all the responsibility for Colorado’s offensive inconsistency. Marion arrived with significant expectations surrounding his Go-Go offense, and there have been stretches when the appeal of the system is obvious.

Those expectations were not vague. Sanders pointed to Marion’s history of producing offenses that scored more than 30 points per game and established 30 points as a benchmark Colorado wanted to reach. CU has reached that number only once through four games.

The offense was also supposed to develop a more physical identity. Marion’s system emphasizes multiple-back formations, misdirection and a run-first approach designed to create favorable numbers and different answers for a defense. Colorado showed some of that against Georgia Tech and Weber State.

Colorado produced 578 yards and 52 points against Weber State. Against Baylor, Joseph Williams caught 11 passes for 127 yards while Quanell Farrakhan Jr. added 117 receiving yards. Marion has shown creativity with motion, multiple-back formations and unconventional looks.

The issue has been turning those flashes into sustained offense. CU scored 52 against Weber State and only 20 combined against Northwestern and Baylor. Against Baylor, the Buffs gained 363 yards and recorded 24 first downs but converted only three of 15 third downs. That is where the concern becomes larger than raw yardage.

There is also a fair question about how quickly the full Go-Go system should be placed on the shoulders of such a young quarterback. The offense uses motion, misdirection and run-pass option concepts that require the quarterback to make quick reads after the snap. Marion has repeatedly described the system as quarterback-friendly and has said the goal is to prevent Lewis from feeling like he has to do everything himself. At the same time, Lewis is still learning how to process college defenses in real time. His struggles against Northwestern and eventual benching at Baylor make it reasonable to ask whether simplifying parts of the offense at times could help his development rather than expecting him to immediately operate every layer of the system. The Go-Go’s RPO structure relies heavily on quarterback decision-making, while Marion himself has emphasized that Lewis remains far from a finished product.

Colorado can move between the 20s. It has not consistently finished possessions. The same problem appears in the red zone, on fourth down and after explosive plays. CU has repeatedly done enough to create an opportunity without doing enough to maximize it.

Wilson’s second-half performance against Baylor was the clearest example. He eventually led a 12-play, 95-yard touchdown drive that tied the game at 13. It was Colorado’s best offensive possession of the afternoon and briefly changed the feel of the game. Baylor answered with a five-play, 65-yard touchdown drive, and CU did not score again.

The defense deserves criticism for giving up the immediate response, but the offense also had opportunities afterward and could not recreate what had just worked. That has become one of the most frustrating parts of Marion’s first four games. One good possession cannot consistently feel like a breakthrough; good offenses have to find ways to stack them.

Quarterback uncertainty adds another challenge

Wilson’s performance also created a decision that did not exist two weeks ago. He finished with 156 passing yards and Colorado’s only touchdown after replacing Lewis. His entry clearly gave the offense a different energy, even if it did not change the final result.

Now Sanders and Marion have to decide whether Lewis remains the unquestioned starter, Wilson earns a larger role or the competition becomes more open. Competition itself is not a problem, but prolonged uncertainty can be.

Colorado spent the offseason building around Lewis and designing an offense meant to make life easier for a young quarterback. Entering conference play with uncertainty at that position complicates everything from play-calling to leadership. It also would be unfair to treat quarterback as the only issue.

Colorado allowed five sacks against Baylor, and negative plays have repeatedly left the offense behind schedule. The Buffs have also lost five fumbles and thrown two interceptions through four games. Those issues build on one another. A penalty creates second-and-long, a sack turns it into third-and-long, pressure makes a young quarterback speed up and a turnover ends the possession completely.

Colorado has too often created situations where it needs an exceptional play simply to recover from an avoidable mistake.

The trenches are still an unresolved program-building question

The concerns up front are bigger than what happened against Baylor. Building Colorado along the offensive and defensive lines has been one of the recurring questions of the Sanders era. After his first season, Sanders himself acknowledged that CU had skill-position talent but lacked what it needed in the trenches. That first team allowed Shedeur Sanders to be sacked 52 times, prompting another major offensive-line rebuild through the portal.

The problem has not always been a lack of effort to fix it. Colorado has repeatedly added experienced linemen, and the line improved at points. But constantly rebuilding the position through transfers also makes long-term development difficult. Former CU quarterback and FOX analyst Joel Klatt has repeatedly identified improvement at the line of scrimmage as one of the program’s most important steps, noting that Colorado’s first Sanders teams had plenty of talent outside while struggling to consistently match opponents up front.

The running game illustrates the longer-term issue. Colorado finished last nationally in rushing offense in 2024 at 65.2 yards per game before improving to 125 per game in 2025. Entering this season, CU had not produced an individual 100-yard rushing performance since 2022. Welch finally broke that drought against Weber State, which was meaningful progress, but one performance does not erase several seasons of inconsistency.

This year’s defensive front has shown encouraging stretches, so it would be unfair to describe the current defensive line as a failure. The larger issue is whether CU can build sustained depth on both sides of the line instead of reconstructing those groups every offseason. Skill-position talent can create highlights, but when protection breaks down or short-yardage situations are lost up front, receivers and quarterbacks have fewer opportunities to matter.

Special teams are quietly making everything harder

Special teams have created another problem that can get lost behind the offensive statistics. Against Baylor, the Bears returned seven Colorado punts for 130 yards, while CU’s lone punt return went for zero. Baylor also held a 42-27 advantage in kickoff-return yards.

That is a substantial field-position difference in a game where Colorado actually finished with more offensive yardage. Those hidden yards matter, especially when CU’s offense already struggles to finish drives. Constantly asking the offense to operate with worse field position only reduces the margin for error further.

Special teams also fit the larger theme of this team: the problems are not isolated to one side of the ball.

The defense has improved, but timing matters

Colorado’s defense is not the biggest issue on this team. The unit responded well against Baylor after allowing 41 points at Northwestern, holding the Bears to 337 total yards and keeping the game within reach into the fourth quarter.

The larger concern is when the breakdowns have happened. Colorado finally scored against Northwestern to make the game 21-7, and the Wildcats immediately answered with another touchdown. CU tied Baylor at 13, only for the Bears to respond with a 65-yard touchdown drive in just over two minutes.

Those responses erase momentum almost immediately. Complementary football means one unit taking advantage when another creates an opportunity, but Colorado has too often done the opposite. The offense finally scores and the defense gives it back. The defense gets a stop and the offense stalls. A positive play is followed by a penalty or another mistake.

The issue is not that every group has been bad all the time. It is that the pieces have rarely worked together for an entire game.

At some point, the responsibility reaches Sanders

That is also why the conversation eventually has to move beyond individual players.

Sanders deserves credit for responding when issues have surfaced. He has addressed discipline publicly, removed players he believed were hurting the team and changed quarterbacks when the offense needed something different. He has also accepted responsibility himself.

That matters because this is not Sanders’ first season in Boulder. It is Year 4.

Most of the roster has been assembled under his direction. Marion and defensive coordinator Chris Marve are his hires. The transfer-heavy roster construction is his approach, and the culture being discussed is one his staff is responsible for maintaining.

Sanders called this a good football team before the season. He described it as extremely disciplined and repeatedly praised the talent available to his staff. Those statements make the current results harder to explain solely through the players.

If the talent is there, repeated penalties become a coaching issue as well as a player issue. If Colorado has enough offensive weapons, scoring 20 combined points over two games raises questions about how effectively those players are being used. If this roster has the ability Sanders believes it does, recurring problems with situational football, special teams and composure should begin improving.

Coaching scrutiny should extend to situational football too. Not every unsuccessful fourth-down attempt is automatically a bad decision, but Colorado has repeatedly struggled on the downs and possessions where margins become smallest. CU failed on three fourth-down attempts against Northwestern and went 0-for-2 at Baylor. Sanders acknowledged after the Northwestern loss that Colorado had been outplayed and outcoached. When the same team is already giving away yards through penalties and turnovers, decisions about when to be aggressive, how to approach critical downs and how quickly the staff adjusts become more important, not less.

That does not mean Sanders is responsible for every mistake. He cannot secure the football for a running back, physically stop players from reacting during a confrontation or complete a third-down pass for his quarterback. But repeated patterns eventually belong to the program.

Discipline is coached. Situational awareness is coached. Player development is coached. Staff construction and roster philosophy ultimately fall under the head coach.

That is why Sanders repeatedly emphasizing the team’s talent actually makes the coaching question more relevant. If Colorado lacked talent, recruiting would be the obvious answer. Sanders has repeatedly said that is not the problem, so the next question has to be what Colorado is doing with the talent it already has.

The transfer portal cannot solve every problem

That question also applies to Colorado’s roster-building philosophy.

The portal has helped Sanders dramatically increase the amount of talent in Boulder, but it has also made continuity difficult. When dozens of new players enter every offseason, chemistry has to be rebuilt quickly. Leadership has to be established quickly. Players have to learn new systems while learning one another.

Colorado also deliberately changed the type of transfer it targeted after last season, with players and coaches emphasizing experienced additions from smaller programs who arrived hungry to prove they could compete at the Power Four level.

There is logic behind that approach. A 3-9 team needed players who viewed Colorado as an opportunity rather than a destination they were entitled to.

The larger question is whether hunger and experience can fully replace the elite talent CU recently relied on.

Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter were capable of covering mistakes because they were exceptional players. This team cannot assume one or two stars will consistently overcome a protection breakdown, a penalty or a lost field-position battle. If Colorado is going to replace transcendent individual talent with a deeper collection of overlooked and experienced transfers, the roster has to become stronger collectively, especially along the lines of scrimmage.

The portal reliance also raises a development question that stretches beyond this season. Sanders signed 43 scholarship high-school players over his first three recruiting classes at Colorado, but only 21 remained on the roster at the end of the 2025 season. That kind of turnover makes it difficult to build a core of players who spend three or four years developing within the same program.

Colorado has also had a limited local high-school pipeline during much of Sanders’ tenure. The 2026 class included only one in-state signee, while the program continued filling much of its roster through transfers. To CU’s credit, the approach appears to be changing: by mid-July, Colorado had 20 commitments in its 2027 high-school class, its largest group under Sanders to that point. That shift matters because the best answer to constant roster resets may eventually be retaining and developing more players rather than replacing them every winter.

Talent can be added quickly. Trust, accountability and cohesion take longer. At some point, developing the players already in the building has to become as important as replacing them.

The NIL landscape creates another challenge

There is also a structural question that has little to do with play-calling or discipline: money. Sanders’ arrival created enormous attention around Colorado and gave the program a recruiting tool few schools could match. The “Prime Effect” brought television exposure, social-media growth and national relevance almost immediately. But college football’s recruiting economy has continued moving toward direct roster spending, where attention alone cannot always close a financial gap. CU itself documented the enormous reach Sanders created when he first arrived in Boulder.

Recent estimates reported from The Athletic place Colorado’s 2026 football roster budget at roughly $18 million to $21 million, ninth in the Big 12. Those figures are estimates rather than audited payrolls, but they provide useful context: Texas Tech, Colorado’s next opponent, was estimated between $38 million and $42 million. Sanders has previously acknowledged that those spending differences can create competitive advantages.

Some outside analysts have consequently questioned whether the celebrity-driven recruiting advantage that defined the beginning of the Sanders era is as powerful in a market where players can compare much larger financial packages elsewhere. Those arguments about fading booster enthusiasm are opinions, not established facts, and Colorado is hardly operating without resources. Still, the larger structural question is legitimate: can Sanders’ personal brand continue compensating for significant spending gaps if CU wants to recruit against the wealthiest programs in the sport?

That does not excuse the current team’s penalties, turnovers or inconsistent execution. Colorado’s estimated spending is competitive within much of the Big 12, and money does not explain going 3-for-15 on third down. But if the discussion expands from why CU is 2-2 to what it will take to build a sustainable contender, NIL infrastructure belongs in that conversation alongside coaching and development.

Colorado’s problems are fixable

The encouraging part is that none of this requires a complete rebuild. Colorado does not need to suddenly discover more talented players. It needs to become more consistent with the ones it already has.

That means fewer penalties, better ball security, stronger pass protection, improved special-teams coverage and more efficient third-down execution. It also means responding better to momentum. A touchdown has to be followed by a defensive stop, a big defensive play has to become points and one successful drive has to lead to another instead of disappearing for the rest of the quarter.

Those improvements sound simple because they are. Winning football is often built on ordinary details performed consistently, and CU has not done enough of them well enough.

Williams has emerged as a reliable receiving option. Farrakhan showed what he can provide against Baylor. Carter remains capable of changing games defensively. Lewis has demonstrated a high ceiling, and Wilson showed he can provide a spark when the offense stalls.

The pieces Sanders keeps talking about are visible, which is what makes the first month both encouraging and frustrating. Colorado has shown enough to suggest it can be better than this. Now it has to prove it.

Through four games, the Buffs look less like a team without enough ability and more like one still searching for consistency, cohesion and a dependable identity. Responsibility for finding those things belongs to the players, the coordinators and ultimately Sanders himself.

Colorado does not need to prove that talented football players are on its roster. It needs to prove those players can become a disciplined, connected football team and that the coaching staff can turn the talent it has assembled into results.