BOULDER — It wasn’t pass interference. It was a two-point takedown.
Kansas State cornerback Keenan Garner sold it with his left arm. But check out his right one. If No. 1 hugged the Buffs’ Will Sheppard any tighter, they could’ve auditioned for “Dancing With The Stars” as a pair.
Carrie Ann Inaba gave the Wildcats an ‘8.’ Big 12 zebras gave CU the shaft.
“Whatever the ref called, he called,” Buffs quarterback Shedeur Sanders said of his heave up for Sheppard on fourth-and-5 with 1:21 left, a no-call that clinched a 31-28 loss to Kansas State at Folsom Field.
“I don’t know. The call wasn’t pass interference, so it’s, ‘OK, we’ve just got to move forward and … assess what we did wrong and go into the next week and fix those things.’”
They can start with the tackling.
Actually, they can end with it, too.
College Football Playoff teams can somehow endure the loss of a Travis Hunter mid-game. CFP teams find that next man up. CFP teams never stop swinging.
But you know what CFP teams don’t do?
They don’t give up 185 rushing yards at home.
They don’t let DJ Giddens (182 rush yards, 220 all-purpose yards) turn their backyard into the stage of a three-hour Heisman Trophy infomercial.
“We didn’t tackle well (Saturday) whatsoever,” coach Deion Sanders said after CU slipped to 4-2, 2-1 in the Big 12. “We didn’t get to the ball as a unit (Saturday). We had some busts in a few things.”
And brilliance in others. Dismiss them, diss them, whatever — these Buffs never say die. An offense that played without Travis Hunter and Jimmy Horn Jr. for a half and Omarion Miller for a quarter probably had no business putting up 28 points on, let alone hanging with, the 18th-ranked team in the country. They hung anyway. If the refs took another look at that dubious Shedeur-to-Sheppard no-call late, who knows?
That wasn’t why they lost.
CU lost because its front seven can still get pushed around by more bruising, more physical programs. The ones that lead with their fists and their fullbacks and ask questions later.
Nebraska pretty much wrote the book on beating the Buffs last month. K-State picked it up and threw the blasted thing at coordinator Rob Livingston’s defense, time and again.
CU lost because Giddens spent the first half absolutely posterizing Shilo Sanders in the second level.
“I thought he played horrible,” Coach Prime said of his son, the sixth-year Buffs safety who returned from an arm injury to record seven tackles — and whiff while attempting several others.
“I thought (Shilo) was rusty. I thought he didn’t have his footing. I thought he wasn’t breaking down. He was coming up trying to make the play … he’s going to do better. I know what he has in him.”
Shilo played Saturday as if defending on skates. He made Giddens look like Nathan MacKinnon in the process.
On one Giddens run, the younger Sanders led with his right shoulder first, declining to wrap. Giddens embraced the contact and just bounced, spun and kept going. On another tote, the K-State back froze the Son of Prime on a juke, planted left, cut right, and made the veteran defender appear to be standing still.
“I mean, I’m going to give the guy credit when he does (that),” CU safety Cam’Ron Silmon-Craig, who finished with seven tackles and a sack, said of the K-State runner. “He balled out. He had a great game … we had (to) tackle better, yes. But I give credit to that guy.”
Where for art thou, Carter Stoutmire?
CFP teams don’t miss tackles. Or assignments. The tight, taut, disciplined ship the Buffs sailed into UCF — the Knights are 0-2 since CU dismantled them in Orlando, by the way — slipped back into some old, worrying 2023-ish habits against the Wildcats (5-1, 2-1 Big 12).
Shedeur, or offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur, or both, gave up on the run game once it became clear that Dallan Hayden, whose seven carries totaled just 11 yards, was getting stonewalled at almost every hole.
Bruising Isaiah Augustave, a revelation during CU’s three-game win streak, didn’t touch the ball until the second half, and just about matched Hayden’s net gains (10 yards) on 50% fewer carries (three). And where the heck was freshman back Micah Welch (zero snaps), another reliable weapon over the past month?
From Miller (eight catches, 145 yards) to Sheppard (five catches, 83 yards, one score) to LaJohntay Wester (five grabs, 58 yards, two scores), Shedeur and his CU mates proved they can move the ball without Hunter raising Cain at wideout.
But what we still don’t know after Saturday is whether the Buffs — who lost their best player to what ESPN reported as a shoulder problem just before halftime — can consistently stop anybody if No. 12 isn’t lined up at cornerback, daring the poor schmuck at QB to throw at his half of the field.
CU’s defense without Hunter is a roulette wheel of black and gold. And opponent gambles the Georgia native simply took away could be back on the table. To wit: K-State cinched the win on a 50-yard touchdown rainbow to Jayce Brown that CU nickel back Preston Hodge, matched up with Brown along the left boundary, appeared to misread in mid-air.
As soon as Hunter left the tilt, CU gave up an 8-play, 60-yard K-State TD drive to end the first half. Followed by an 11-play, 81-yard Wildcats scoring drive coming out of halftime.
Over the three drives immediately after Hunter had left the game, the ‘Cats put up 17 points — 5.7 per possession. The three drives prior to that: Punt, touchdown, punt. Seven points on three possessions.
While the Buffs won’t play a team as good, or as fundamentally sound, as K-State the rest of the way, Hunter’s potential absence could start putting stress tests on a defense that had been one of the Big 12’s more pleasant surprises.
CFP teams don’t need their QB1 to single-handedly save their back bacon each week. Although if Hunter’s out for any length of time, Shedeur might very well have to.
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