Colorado football signed five players from the transfer portal on Saturday, with one of them immediately filling a need on the defensive line.

Baylor transfer defensive lineman Samu Taumanupepe flipped his commitment from Florida to Colorado. At 6-foot-3, 375 pounds, Taumanupepe significantly upgrades the Buffaloes nose tackle position. 247Sports rates him as a three-star recruit and the No. 108 defensive lineman in the portal.

Taumanupepe finished the 2025 season with two total tackles across 7 games. Before Baylor, he spent two seasons at Texas A&M, recording 6 total tackles. He now comes to Colorado with hopes of shoring up the Buffaloes’ abysmal run defense.

Taumanupepe is CU’s 13th defensive line addition, showing head coach Deion Sanders’ clear commitment toward improving one of college football’s worst offenses.

The Broncos are advancing in the playoffs after defeating the Buffalo Bills in overtime on Saturday in Denver by a score of 33-30. In eight days, they’ll host the AFC Championship game for the eighth time in franchise history.

Denver cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian intercepted Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen on a deep toss in overtime, quarterback Bo Nix orchestrated a drive — in which the Bills were flagged for pass interference twice — and kicker Will Lutz secured the win with a 23-yard field goal in another frantic finish for the (15-3) Broncos. It was their thirteenth comeback win this season.

There were several surprises in the first playoff game in the Mile High City since Jan. 24, 2015, including:

– A touchdown scored by a Broncos offensive lineman for the first time in the playoffs in franchise history. Tackle Frank Crum caught a pass from Nix in the second quarter and rumbled into the endzone for the first Denver touchdown of the game.

– Five turnovers created by the Broncos defense, which wasn’t known during the regular season as a unit that generated lots of turnovers.

Nix went 26 for 46 for 279 yards, with three passing touchdowns and an interception in the game. He is only the 22nd quarterback in league history to lead his team to a conference championship game within his first two seasons.

“We found a way to win again and our defense made stops,” Nix told CBS Sports reporter Tracy Wolfson after the game. “I’m proud of our guys. I’m proud of this organization, I’m proud of the way we compete, we fight. We’re just never out of it.”

Denver will now wait until Sunday afternoon to learn their next playoff opponent. They’ll face the winner of Sunday afternoon’s battle between the Patriots and the Houston Texans in New England. That game kicks off at 1 p.m. Mountain Time.

The Broncos have played in 10 AFC Championship games previously. Seven of those have been played in Colorado — Denver has only lost one of those home-hosted championship games.

With Saturday’s win at Empower Field at Mile High, Broncos head coach Sean Payton now has 10 postseason wins under his belt, which moves him into a tie with three coaches for 16th-most postseason wins by a head coach in NFL history: Bill Walsh, Bud Grant and George Seifert.

The East Colfax neighborhood in Aurora will be the first community in Colorado to receive a state-sponsored grant to study how pollution, extreme heat and other environmental factors affect people’s health and quality of life.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced Friday that East Colfax would be its first-ever Environmental Equity and Cumulative Impact Analysis recipient.

The department’s Office of Environmental Justice will work with the grassroots nonprofit Black Parents United Foundation to collect data, listen to residents’ experiences and explore ways to improve environmental quality.

Black Parents United will receive $125,000 for its work, and the state health department will hire a third-party researcher, who will be paid up to $900,000 to conduct the analysis and write the report, said Meghan Guevara, director of the Office of Environmental Justice.

“This is really a chance to look holistically at the environmental stressors and health impacts that one community is facing,” Guevara said.

The findings will be applied to future state and local decisions on permitting, planning and public health.

For years, state regulators, businesses, environmentalists and people who live in polluted neighborhoods have been at an impasse on how to define cumulative impacts and how to measure their impact on people’s health.

Many people who live in polluted neighborhoods argue that multiple factors, such as companies that spew toxic chemicals into the air, heavy traffic, extreme heat and lack of health care options, can combine to compound health problems.