Matt Leinart weighs in on who should go No. 1 in NFL Draft
Fox Sports’ Matt Leinart discusses the differences between Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft.
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SAN ANTONIO – Colorado head coach Deion Sanders hopped on a golf cart next to his bodyguard and zoomed down a stadium tunnel on his way out of town.
He had just answered questions from reporters about what happened here Saturday night in the Alamo Bowl – a 36-14 loss against BYU in his final game coaching his two youngest sons in college.
He just didn’t want to dwell on it.
“That’s a wrap,” Sanders said. “It’s over.”
He said the loss wouldn’t overshadow the larger journey he’s had at Colorado because they’re already “on to the next.” Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter and Sanders’ sons will try to climb the ladder to the NFL next season after two seasons at Colorado.
“They’re gonna have tremendous careers,” Sanders said. “They’re gonna move on. They flush it.”
But it was still quite an egg they laid at the Alamodome in front of a sold-out crowd of 64,261, especially after all the build-up about how emotional this game would be for Sanders. Before the game, ABC television cameras even focused on him as he walked his final pregame walk with his quarterback son Shedeur and safety son Shilo.
Then came kickoff and – poof – their edge was gone.
Why did it end this way for the Sanders family?
BYU (11-2) seemed far more eager than the Buffaloes (9-4), who have been known for starting slowly this season, most notably in a devastating 37-21 loss against Kansas last month, when they fell behind 17-0 and never recovered.
In this case, they did it again, following the lead of their live bison mascot, Ralphie, who attempted to run on the field before the game but instead just kind of walked before heading for the exits.
The Buffs fell into a 20-0 hole at halftime, failed to score on their first six possessions and managed just 61 yards of total offense in the first half.
Where did it all go wrong on offense?
“Everywhere,” said Shedeur Sanders, who was sacked four times and finished 16-of-23 passing for 208 yards and two touchdowns with two interceptions. “It was nothing that we did great tonight.”
“Ditto,” said his father.
Shedeur Sanders still didn’t do what Cam Ward did
Despite what happened Saturday, Shedeur Sanders still might be the first quarterback selected in the NFL draft in April. It’s likely to be him or Cam Ward, the quarterback for the Miami Hurricanes.
But both took decidedly different approaches to how they handled their final college games on Saturday. Sanders decided to play the game even though it could have cost him millions of dollars in future earnings if he got injured in it despite the insurance policy he obtained for it.
Ward decided to play in his bowl game Saturday, too, but not after halftime. His Hurricanes, leading 31-28 at the half, ended up losing 42-41.
By contrast, Sanders played to the end in the fourth quarter, even when the game was well out of reach after BYU took a 36-7 lead with 5:28 left.
Why risk it?
“We started it, so we had to finish it,” Sanders said. “No matter what it was, if it was the other way around … we were still gonna play regardless.”
Hunter, the two-way star, also played most of the game and finished with four catches for 106 yards and a touchdown as a receiver, along with four tackles on defense. Luckily, there were no significant injuries.
‘You expect us to be exciting’
In many ways, the Buffs looked like last year’s team, when they finished 4-8 in Deion Sanders’ first season. They committed five penalties in the first half as Shedeur Sanders felt steady pressure from the BYU defense. They disappeared at times, looking nothing like the team that finished in a first-place tie with BYU and two other teams in the Big 12 Conference.
At one point in the fourth quarter, BYU linebacker Isaiah Glasker intercepted a pass from Shedeur Sanders and then did Deion Sanders’ old “Deion Shuffle” dance to celebrate in front of the Colorado sideline.
“I feel like going into this game, especially seeing Travis Hunter and Shedeur and these great players on Colorado, I feel like nobody on our team was nervous,” Glasker said. “We just was ready to play.”
Colorado was not, which was surprising for a reason, just two years after the Buffs finished 1-11 prior to hiring Sanders as coach.
“We established expectations,” Deion Sanders said. “So now you expect us to perform a certain way. You expect us to win. You expect us to be exciting. You expect us to be a lot more disciplined than we just played today. You just have expectations of us now. That’s what we’ve established.”
It still was Colorado’s best season since 2016, when the Buffs finished 10-4, also after a blowout loss in the Alamo Bowl. But it will be difficult for Colorado to measure up to those expectations after losing Hunter and Shedeur Sanders.
“It felt great representing Colorado and bringing it back to where it was in the past,” Shedeur Sanders said. “We laid the foundation of the program so now it’s able for the other players coming in to take off and pick up where we left off.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
(This story was updated to add new information.)