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Ever since Deion Sanders got to Boulder and became the head coach of Colorado football, the spotlight has been shining brightly on the black and gold. Everything that the Buffs did was under the microscope and dissected by the national media over the last two seasons, but that may be cooling off a bit.
Of course, “Coach Prime” is still in the fold and will bring all the attention that he usually does, but a lot of the rest of the glamour has rubbed off. Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter are both off to the NFL as football fans look forward to how they will get their careers started with the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively.
That could be a good thing for this Colorado group, which has once again been overhauled in the transfer portal. Kaidon Salter comes in from Liberty to lead the Buffs into the 2025 season, that is, if he can win the job from talented freshman Julian Lewis.
The Big 12 is wide open coming into this season, and the Buffs will feel like they have chances to finish near the top of the league. However, not everything will be easy in a conference that has a lot of quality football teams and should be like the Wild West week in and week out.
Here are three bold predictions for Colorado in its third season under Deion Sanders.
Julian Lewis will start at least four games
A lot of the buzz around this Colorado team during the offseason and heading into camp is around the quarterback battle. Of course, Deion Sanders and company haven't had to deal with any controversy at the position since he has been at Colorado, with Shedeur Sanders leading the way.
Now, however, a touted transfer and a talented freshman will battle it out in camp for the job. Liberty transfer Kaidon Salter has a lot of experience at the college level and led a very successful Flames team in 2023, but a rough season in 2024 led him to depart the program. However, a change of scenery could help him get back to the level of the top quarterbacks in the game.
Sanders also brought in Julian Lewis, a highly-recruited quarterback out of high school who was originally committed to USC. Lewis reclassified from the Class of 2026 to come to college a year early, so he is on the younger side.
Salter will come into the season as the favorite to win the job and has the ability to carry an offense, as evidenced by his 2023 campaign that saw him win Conference USA MVP honors. However, he isn't a natural fit with offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur's scheme that relied a lot on timing and accuracy last season, which are two things he struggles with.
If Colorado starts to struggle during a tough Big 12 slate, it wouldn't be a surprise to see Sanders turn to Lewis and see what he has in the freshman.
Omarion Miller leads team in receiving, earns All-Big 12 honors
Even when the Buffs struggled in their first season under Sanders in 2023, they always had a very talented group at wide receiver. Travis Hunter was the star of the show, but Jimmy Horn Jr., Xavier Weaver, Will Sheppard and LaJohntay Wester all made the NFL coming out of Colorado in the last two years as well.
With the top four wideouts from last season's team gone, the receiver room will look a lot different heading into this year. However, Omarion Miller could be the next name on that list of Buffs to head to the pros once they get out of Boulder.
Miller hasn't been the most consistent performer for Colorado in the last two years as he has struggled to find playing time with all of that aforementioned talent in the room. However, his flashes are NFL-caliber and he should have the runway to put all of that together this season.
As a freshman in 2023, Miller burst onto the scene with a monster game against USC, recording seven catches for 196 yards and a touchdown. Then, last season, Miller had a huge game against Kansas State with eight catches for 145 yards before going down with a serious leg injury that would keep him out for the rest of the season.
Miller has all of the talent: size, speed and ability to win contested catches on the outside. With a pair of new quarterbacks learning the system, they will need a go-to player on the outside to rely on and make some plays for them. Miller is more than capable of being that guy in Boulder this fall.
DJ McKinney earns Thorpe Award consideration
Cornerback is another position where Colorado has thrived since Sanders arrived, and now the Buffs have another potential NFL prospect in the secondary in DJ McKinney.
It's unlikely that anybody will stack up the production that Travis Hunter did in the Colorado secondary, but McKinney is a prototypical NFL-style corner who will have a chance to show off his skills once again in defensive coordinator Robert Livingston's man-heavy defensive scheme.
The Oklahoma State transfer was the weak link in the Colorado secondary early in the 2024 season, with opposing offenses targeting him repeatedly as they tried to stay as far away from Hunter as possible. However, he became more and more reliable with experience late in the season, including a pick-six against his old team on Senior Day.
For the season, McKinney finished with 62 tackles, three interceptions and nine pass breakups.
Listed at 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, McKinney has the ideal frame for an NFL cornerback that has earned him some consideration as a potential first-round draft pick heading into the season. He will now be the shutdown guy in Livingston's defense heading into next season and should have plenty of chances for ball production in the high-flying Big 12, which will lead to some award talk at the end of the season.
