Probably more than any other Pac-12 team, Colorado is a tough group to gauge leading into the 2023 season. While the Buffaloes have brought in college football’s top incoming transfer class, their 1-11 record last year is still a recent memory.
Personally, a 6-6 campaign in head coach Deion Sanders’ first season seems like a reasonable prediction. Colorado has a difficult schedule once again and the Buffs aren’t at the level of USC, Oregon, Utah and Oregon State just yet.
With a couple of weeks remaining until spring football begins, Raymond Lucas Jr. of 247Sports offered his way-too-early order of finish for the Pac-12, and to little surprise, USC, Oregon and Washington were his projected top three teams. Colorado, meanwhile, was near the bottom of the conference with a 3-6 record in Pac-12 play (4-8 overall).
Here’s what Lucas Jr. wrote on the Buffs:
Wins: Colorado State, Arizona State, Stanford, Arizona
Losses: TCU, Nebraska, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Oregon State, Washington State, Utah
Colorado will be drastically better than it was in 2023, but we know that already. The question everyone is asking is how much better it will be. Our answer is that the Buffaloes will be a contender in the Pac-12, just not in Deion Sanders’ first year at the helm. The roster has no shortage of high-level players, with Travis Hunter being the headliner but the schedule is what we view as the toughest in the conference. Opening the season against TCU will be a challenge, but the Week 2 clash against Nebraska could tell us a lot about what the Buffs’ will accomplish in 2023. We expect the strength of schedule and a lack of depth to keep Colorado out of a bowl game, but it should be a highly competitive team.
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