Deion Sanders is in his third season as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes. After a 9-4 campaign in 2024, Colorado has gotten off to a slow 2-3 start in 2025, with many questioning the team’s offensive and defensive play-calling.
While Sanders is the head coach, he doesn’t call plays on either side of the ball. He recently explained why he made that sacrifice, especially while coaching his sons in Colorado.
Deion Sanders Explains How His Sons Influenced His Decision to Avoid Play Calling
The Buffaloes have struggled so far in 2025. Through five games, they sit at 2-3 and haven’t performed well on either side of the ball.
Colorado’s offense has been mediocre, ranking 41st in the country according to PFSN’s CFB OFFi metric, while the defense has struggled, ranking 83rd in PFSN’s CFB DEFi metric.
With the early-season struggles, many have pointed to Colorado’s play calling as a reason for the lack of success, but that responsibility doesn’t fall on Sanders. He delegates play calling to his offensive and defensive coordinators, like many college coaches.
This might surprise some, given that Sanders is one of the best cornerbacks in college and NFL history, with a strong understanding of the game, especially on defense. However, Coach Prime recently revealed that his decision not to call plays was influenced by coaching his sons, Shedeur and Shilo, at Colorado.
Sanders explained that while he believes he is more than capable of calling plays, he knows he’s an emotional coach and doesn’t want his emotions to cloud his judgment. He also shared that he didn’t want people to think his play calling favored Shilo and Shedeur when he was their coach.
“Sometimes I may allow emotions to get involved, and then I didn’t want to do that with my own son quarterbacking and the other one playing safety,” Coach Prime said. “I didn’t want ‘he’s just calling that blitz cause he wants his son to get a sack’ or ‘he’s just calling that, cause he wants his son to throw for 400 yards’ I wanted to stay out of that.”
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It’s an interesting approach from the Buffaloes’ head coach, but it makes sense. Few college coaches ever have the opportunity to coach their own sons, and while both Shedeur and Shilo were standout players at Colorado, Sanders didn’t want anyone to think his coaching decisions were made specifically to benefit them.
With Shilo and Shedeur now both graduated from Colorado, it will be interesting to see if Sanders eventually takes play-calling into his own hands, especially if the Buffaloes continue to struggle. For now, though, it appears he still doesn’t see himself doing that as Colorado’s head coach.
