As of Monday, the Colorado football team was still 12 days away from the start of the Coach Prime era.
The Buffaloes already have their sights set on the TCU Horned Frogs, however.
“Just had a good practice out here today, defense getting everything together, cleaning some stuff up, getting ready for this game next week,” safety Shilo Sanders said after Monday’s practice. “Everybody’s more locked in, I feel like, this week than any other week because itap winding down. Itap time to go soon. We’re almost ready to go.”
CU opens the season Sept. 2 at TCU (10 a.m. MT, Fox), last year’s national runner-up, and it will be the first game for new head coach Deion Sanders.
Coming off a 1-11 season – albeit with a very different roster and coaching staff – CU is a 20.5-point underdog against TCU for the opener, but getting off to a good start is important to the Buffs.
“We’ve been game planning for a while,” defensive coordinator Charles Kelly said. “Our coaches have done a good job of breaking things down and we’re finalizing (the plan). First of all, one thing training camp tells you, you evaluate everything you have, players that you have. Now you know what you can do, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. So that gives us a little bit better idea of how we’ll approach it. But yes, we’re getting more into the game plan mode versus TCU.”
One of those key players will be Shilo Sanders, son of the head coach and a transfer from Jackson State.
A year ago at this time, Shilo was recovering from a torn ACL and missed JSU’s first five games. Now, he’s one of the leaders of a talented secondary.
“I feel so good right now because last year I was coming off an injury in the spring,” he said. “This whole time (in camp), I feel like this is the smartest and strongest, the fastest I’ve ever been, especially being coached by Coach Kelly and our staff. I got my dad, Coach Prime, up here. They’re always teaching us hustle to the ball, effort and just the stuff that really makes a difference between good and great because I’m trying to be great.”
According to Kelly, Shilo and junior Trevor Woods have worked well together at safety this camp in helping the defense get ready.
“In the back end, I think Shilo and Trevor have done a really good job of communicating,” Kelly said. “I think the biggest thing I’ve seen with Shilo is his maturity as a player. I mean, he really comes to prepare. He spends a lot of time on his own, as well as other guys. He’s got a group of guys that he takes and they all meet together, so by the time I’m watching film with them in the afternoon, they already have watched the video, so now they’re absorbing the corrections.
“I think the neatest thing about when you’re correcting people, guys have to listen. They can’t be thinking about, ‘Oh, I gotta make an excuse of why I did that.’ This is what we’ve got to do to fix it. Those guys have been that way. They’re taking the coaching and it shows up on film.”
After playing two seasons at South Carolina and two seasons at Jackson State, Shilo, 23, is one of the most experienced players on the defense and having his experience could pay off for the Buffs as they fine-tune their defense before facing TCU.
“We’ve got a lot of new players, so just everybody getting on the same page,” Shilo said of the main objective. “We’re running a pro defense with Coach Kelly’s playbook, so we’ve got to play like pros. Itap just getting everybody on the same page and doing all that. I wouldn’t say itap the biggest challenge but we’re working towards it.”
Shilo added that he’s been watching film of TCU for a while. Asked his analysis of the Horned Frogs, he turned the focus on the Buffs.
“I mean, we’re here to dominate,” he said, echoing the confidence produced by his father. “Thatap how we’re thinking, thatap how we’re preparing. We’re not preparing just to win because thatap not really enough. You see all our coaches are great, so they expect greatness out of us.”
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