Betting Stuff: Colorado demands attention, but does it provide substance in 2024?
Published:
Here we are talking about Colorado again.
It’s against my wishes, if that’s any consolation. But how can we not talk about Deion Sanders’ second Buffs team after EA Sports decided to name the offense the eighth-best offense in college football for the 2024 season and hand the defense a top-20 spot in the video game’s ratings system? That information, which was shared by the video game developer on Thursday, lit up social media.
Colorado? Really?
In the upcoming video game — which, awful ratings and clunky “toughest places to play” lists aside, everyone is generally anxious to get their hands on — Colorado has an 89 overall rating on offense and an 84 overall rating on defense.
The Buffs’ offense is ahead of teams like Ole Miss (87 overall) and Memphis (85 overall). The Buffs’ defense is viewed as one of the 20 best in the country by a team of real-life, serious people who claim to have watched years of film.
This is what EA said about its team ratings:
The Development Team meticulously examined hundreds of thousands of data points to arrive at our team power rankings. With help from our friends at Pro Football Focus (PFF), the team analyzed all 134 rosters, thousands of players, years worth of game film, and mountains of stats, ultimately arriving at our Team Power Rankings.
First, an obvious caveat: this is gobbledygook over a video game. It means absolutely nothing. And anyone that has stumbled their way through an EA Sports title in recent years knows better than to take the game developer seriously.
But Colorado’s ratings here deserve some attention if only because they stand in stark contrast to the way the public views the Buffs.
Colorado is a longshot to win the College Football Playoff in 2024 (+20000 at ESPN Bet). The Buffs aren’t even viewed as a Playoff-caliber team, with +1500 odds of making the CFP at ESPN Bet (implied probability of 6.3%). ESPN’s FPI model gives CU a 5.8% chance to make the CFP.
The Buffs have 2 household names that merit some degree of Heisman buzz in quarterback Shedeur Sanders (+4000) and wideout/corner Travis Hunter (+6000).
(A brief aside: Perhaps those 2 are the sole reason Colorado rates so well in the upcoming game. If Sanders were anything above a 95 and Hunter — a cover athlete — were anything above a 95, that might inflate the overall rating. I don’t fully buy that, though, because Oklahoma State’s Ollie Gordon II is the sport’s best returning running back and yet OSU wasn’t anywhere to be found among the top 25 offenses.)
They’re not expected to contend for the Big 12 in their first season, with 10 conference peers all carrying shorter odds to win the league into the preseason.
And they’re not even expected to contend for a significant bowl game. ESPN Bet has the win total set at 5.5. The under has even odds.
The Buffs aren’t likely to sniff the preseason AP Top 25 unless someone with a tie to the school throws them a vote. But a top-10 offensive rating and a top-20 defensive rating in the game implies a top-20 team at the outset of the season.
Those ratings will obviously fluctuate once the season begins, but this discussion begs a question: Is there actually value going against the grain on the Colorado front right now?
Is there actually some substance behind all the flash?
Colorado signed just 11 high school prospects in the 2024 class, once again opting to build the team via the transfer portal. In total, 36 scholarship players left the team by way of transfer during the winter and spring windows.
Sanders secured commitments from 42 scholarship transfers to replace those outgoings. (Two of the transfer pledges backed off and went elsewhere.)
The transfer class ranked eighth in the country.
Nineteen of those 42 transfer commitments came from offensive or defensive linemen. And any discussion about the Buffs in 2024 begins and ends on the line of scrimmage.
I watched more of Colorado than I would have otherwise liked to in 2023. The line play was atrocious both ways. And no amount of change out on the perimeter will change Colorado’s fortunes if the line play doesn’t drastically improve.
Their ranks last season:
- 133rd (of 133 FBS teams) in yards per rushing attempt
- 103rd in yards allowed per rushing attempt faced
- 126th in explosive rushing rate
- 119th in explosive rushing rate allowed
- 132nd in sacks allowed
- 63rd in sacks created
- 110th in tackles for loss allowed
- 96th in tackles for loss created
- 131st in pressures allowed (per ESPN)
- 133rd in yards per rush before contact (per ESPN)
The Buffs added third-team All-AAC guard Tyler Johnson, All-CUSA honorable mention guard Justin Mayers, and 5-star freshman Jordan Seaton. They’re also getting back FCS All-American guard Tyler Brown, who transferred from Jackson State ahead of the 2023 season but had to sit after he was ruled ineligible by the NCAA.
Colorado also boosted its depth on the defensive line, with notable transfers from Dayon Hayes (Pitt) and BJ Green (Arizona State). Hayes had 10.5 tackles for loss last year for the Panthers. Green went from walk-on to all-conference edge rusher with the Sun Devils, totaling 21 tackles for loss in 36 games.
On paper, Colorado hit heavy in its problem areas.
But we saw this last season, when Sanders radically remade the roster via the transfer portal, sprinted out of the gates with 3 straight wins, and then lost 8 of the 9. Colorado ended 2023 with the same league record it had in 2022.
The saving grace for Prime is that CU lost 5 games that were decided by 8 points or less. Of their 12 games, 8 of them were one-possession games. If Colorado is better on the line of scrimmage — particularly protecting the quarterback, a couple more of those games might flip.
That’s putting a lot on the shoulders of a true blindside protector and an offensive line playing together for the first time. It’s hard to get behind the Buffs early on, and if the season starts poorly, pressure will mount.
Colorado opens its season at home against North Dakota State. The Bison have played in 10 of the last 13 FCS national championship games, and they’re 6-1 in their last 7 meetings with FBS opponents. The Bison have an average cover margin of more than 17 points over that span and yet the Buffs are an 8-point favorite at ESPN Bet. I like the Bison there.
NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, MA, KS, KY, LA, TN, NC, CO, AZ, IA, IL, IN, MI, OH Must be 21+. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
After that, CU has to go play at Nebraska, which has the sixth-ranked defense in the country (using SP+, not whatever EA Sports used) and a 5-star quarterback in Dylan Raiola.
If Colorado is 0-2 out of the gates, what happens?
With so little to go on, backing the Buffs in 2024 is essentially betting on vibes. You’re wagering that Sanders learned from his mistakes in Year 1 and put together a better unit in Year 2, because a bulk of the outgoing transfers were players who were brought in by this regime and then recruited over after things went haywire.
Nothing much has changed. Maybe some of the folks at EA Sports are betting on the Buffs in 2024. Based on the widespread pushback we saw on Thursday, they’re probably on an island.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
