Joel Klatt believes predicting a drop off for Colorado in 2025 is wrong

Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt believed it would be disingenuous to predict a drop off for Colorado in 2025. Sure, you have to replace a Heisman Trophy winner in Travis Hunter and a record-setting QB in Shedeur Sanders, but the Buffaloes have talent back.

Not only that, their bugaboo of the offensive and defensive line is not as big of an issue going into the fall. You simply can’t replace talent like Hunter and Sanders right away.

But the collection of talent this year should give Colorado a competitive program on the field. To count them out in the Big 12 would be crazy.

“Well, talent acquisition is the lifeblood of the program, and they’ve done a nice job acquiring talent,” Klatt told Brian Howell at Big 12 Media Days. “I think that they should be good at the quarterback position. What I actually think is more important, rather than some of those breakout stars that were off the line of scrimmage, is that the line of scrimmage is getting better and better and better and deeper. And I think you would agree with that, as opposed to, like, two years ago, they had some marquee talent on the outside, the line of scrimmage was really poor, and they tried to play around it, and it was tough. 

“They got a little bit better last year, and they should be a little bit better on the line of scrimmage this year. And I think that alone should help them overcome some of those losses on the outside.” 

Kaidon Salter or Julian Lewis will start at QB, with the likely winner of the job being Salter due to his experience. But Deion Sanders didn’t pick a starter and admitted both could contribute this season.

The bigger issue will be Colorado replacing Hunter, who was a star on both sides of the ball. You’ll need a collection of players to do that.

“Can you replace Shedeur right away? No,” Klatt said. “You know, even with Juju or Kaidon, and I think that’s going to be difficult to do, although those two players are quality players, the harder one is Travis. Travis was the unicorn of all unicorns. I know that, you know, everyone just said, ‘Oh, you love Colorado. You love Travis.’ Like, yeah, for a reason. Like, he was ridiculous. 

“He was so good. He was one of the best players I’ve ever seen play college football. That’s going to be very difficult to overcome because (there’s) going to have to be multiple players that overcome that.”

Colorado opens the season against Georgia Tech at home next month. Kickoff is set for August 29th at 8:00 p.m. ET.