Deion Sanders doubles down Colorado didn’t need bye week

Colorado comes off a bye week in Week 9, traveling to face a ranked UCLA squad on Saturday. But Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders remains adamant that his team didn’t need the week off.

The Buffaloes dropped a disappointing game to Stanford before the bye, letting a 29-0 lead slip away in the second half. And with a murderers row for the final five games — UCLA, Oregon State, Arizona, Washington State and Utah — Sanders would’ve preferred to keep his foot on the gas.

“You’ve had a couple weeks but you gotta understand they had a break as well. So they didn’t have two straight entire weeks they had a, I think a four day — they had four days off before we came back and worked on Sunday, then we worked on Monday. We’re off today,” Sanders said earlier in the week. “But no matter how much you prepare, you gotta execute. You gotta execute what you set out to do. We gotta be — thank you Lord. We gotta do better. We gotta do better and I’m pretty sure we will.” 

To get bowl eligible, the now 4-3 Buffaloes will need to pick off a pair of wins against a quintet of teams that are currently hold a 25-10 combined record. The worst two teams, by record, are Arizona and Washington State, which are both 4-3 like Colorado and fighting for bowl eligibility down the stretch.

And if Sanders had had his way, his team wouldn’t have been given the window to take their foot off the gas, especially given that injuries hadn’t been a major factor for Colorado heading into the bye week.

He used a bit of an unorthodox analogy to make his point.

I don’t think we needed to get away and we needed rest. We needed to maintain and keep on going. It’s just like you break up with a relationship. You need a bye week or do you want to keep on going? I want to keep on going, I want to keep on moving, I want to keep on progressing, I want to keep on going forward. That’s how I’m built, to go forward,” Sanders said. “As a man and woman is built to go forward. And we’re thankful, we’re appreciative. We didn’t have many injuries. I think we’re going to get maybe a couple of players back, due to injuries. But overall I think we’ve been pretty good, injury wise.”