Colorado’s trip to Evanston fell apart fast. Four turnovers and a rain-soaked night at Northwestern turned into a 41-7 rout on September 19, the Buffaloes’ first loss of the season. Deion Sanders didn’t just have words for his team’s effort afterward. He trimmed the roster.
Asked about the personnel changes on his weekly coaches show, Sanders made clear the cuts weren’t really about the scoreboard.
“Don’t think it was the team,” Sanders said. “It was a few knuckleheads I didn’t want to poison the team.”
He reiterated the same point during his press conference, stressing the move wasn’t solely tied to the loss but reflected how the team had been functioning for a while. Three players were let go in total, though Sanders didn’t name them publicly.
Coach Prime said there’s “a few guys not on the team anymore” when asked about how players reacted after the Northwestern game pic.twitter.com/5nzMuTYNub
— DNVR Buffs (@DNVR_Buffs) September 22, 2026
A Pattern Going Back to Year One
This marks the fourth straight year Colorado has cut players in the middle of a season under Sanders, and the practice traces back to his very first days on the job. Shortly after his introductory press conference in 2022, Sanders famously told his new roster he was bringing his “Louis Luggage” to Boulder, a warning that plenty of them wouldn’t be sticking around.
He’s kept that promise. Since 2022, 173 players have moved on from the Colorado program, more than any other team in the Power Four conferences, an average of 43.25 departures a year. The results have swung wildly to match: a 9-4 season and an Alamo Bowl trip in 2024, followed by a 3-9 collapse in 2025. This year has been just as uneven, with the Buffaloes opening 2-0 before losing to Northwestern and then falling 23-13 to Baylor in their Big 12 opener, dropping to 2-2 heading into a home date with No. 11 Texas Tech.
The Tar’Varish Dawson Precedent
Not every roster move under Sanders has been about poor play, and one of the more pointed examples came in 2024 with receiver Tar’Varish Dawson. Dawson hit travel delays coming back from Florida, where he’d gone to celebrate his daughter’s first birthday. When he got back to Boulder, Sanders told him he’d lost his starting job.
Dawson gave his side of that story to SI in 2024, describing a confrontation that went well beyond a lost starting spot.
“Coach Prime started talking about how I let down the program, especially Shedeur, by coming back late,” Dawson said. “He told me he was going to take away my playing time and was upset. I spoke up for myself. Coach Prime told us to be responsible and take care of our family. That’s what I was doing. I told him it was nonsense that I was being punished for being present for my daughter, but Shilo and Shedeur could miss a week for a fashion show. Prime lost it and started cussing me out and told me to pack my stuff in front of my teammates.”
That’s Dawson’s account of what happened, not something Sanders has addressed point by point in his own words, but it’s stuck around as the clearest example of how quickly Sanders will act when he feels a player has crossed a line he’s drawn for the program.
Whatever standard Sanders is holding this year’s roster to, the timing lines up with a stretch that’s tested his team in ways the first two weeks didn’t. Colorado limps into its Texas Tech matchup at 2-2, and if history is any indicator, this almost certainly won’t be the last roster shake-up of the season.