Keeler: Deion Sanders, CU Buffs can do so much better than Pat Shurmur calling plays in 2024

The only way Pat Shurmur reaches the College Football Playoff next winter is if a pal buys him a ticket.

Deion Sanders? Shedeur Sanders? Travis Hunter? The Buffs should be beating prospective offensive play-callers off with a stick. Not sticking Shedeur with another season of Pencil Pat pushing the buttons.

Yet when USA Today asked Coach Prime Monday if Shurmur, who put Teddy Bridgewater on a stretcher and Drew Lock in purgatory, would return as CU’s offensive coordinator, this was Sanders’ reply:

“Yeah,” Coach Prime said, “most likely.”

Lordy, the man’s interviews for the “Coach Prime” TV show that debuts later this week must be pure gold. Because his offenses are anything but.

Sanders took the keys from Sean Lewis and handed them to Shurmur around Halloween. CU hasn’t won a game since.

Only three Pac-12 teams scored fewer points than the Buffs did — 20.25 per game — after Nov. 1. And Stanford, Arizona State and UCLA still averaged 2.6 league wins, or more than twice what CU wound up with once the dust settled.

Prime can do better. Can’t he?

I mean, yeah, half of a crummy offensive line has to be replaced on the fly. But the core pieces at the skill positions, if healthy, look sterling.

Shedeur Sanders was a one-man offense last year. In 11 games, he broke CU’s single-season passing yardage standard. He was a touchdown toss away from tying the single-season mark there, too. He’s got an NFL arm with NFL shoulders, connected to an NFL head.

Surely, there’s another Sean Lewis type out there — a young, aggressive play-caller who’s just itching for a chance to help No. 2 smash records to his heart’s content. Someone begging for a chance to work with one of the top returning signal-callers in the country. For a chance to work with Hunter, college football’s most gifted superfreak.

Good offensive coordinators should be banging down athletic director Rick George’s door right now. If they aren’t, is it because they know something we don’t?

The Prime Plan has always been aimed at Year 2. New conference. New hope. The revamped Big 12 is imminently winnable, a hoops league stuffed with football middleweights. A perfect final ride for The Chosen Ones — Shedeur, Shilo and Travis — together in Buffs gold. A chance to push every chip to the middle of the table.

So why is Papa Sanders recycling this one?

The cynic would say No. 2 is No. 1 when it comes to the CU offense, and retaining Shurmur offers the added bonus, in theory, of making Deion’s son even more attractive for NFL scouts in advance of the ’25 draft.

Shurmur brings a long NFL track record to the table, even if that record has more wild twists than Wolf Creek Pass. Perhaps Pops wants Pencil Pat teaching Shedeur a pro-style offense using pro-style terms at a pro-style clip.

Although wouldn’t Byron Leftwich bring those same NFL bona fides, without all that Broncos baggage?

Whatever Shedeur wants, Shedeur gets. If a conflict emerges between one of Sanders’ children and a coach, which one do you think Coach Prime is most likely to side with, consequences be damned?

“Pat and I communicate really well,” the elder Sanders said following a season-ending loss at Utah. “Pat and Sean communicated really well. Pat and Shedeur communicate really well. So I think he did a great job. I really did.”

Twenty points per game? 0-4? Great?

Ask yourself this: Which coach would you rather have out on the recruiting trail preaching the gospel of Prime? Lewis, a 37-year-old who kept a PlayStation 4 in his office at Kent State for players to come in and use? Or Shurmur, who turns 59 next April? And who said two years ago, in front of a pack of NFL reporters, “I’m not a very social-media savvy guy.”

Sanders is on his phone selling everything to everyone, all the time. Shurmur thinks TikTok is the sound a watch makes after you wind it. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, the staff is in flux, a remake-in-progress. Yes, a lot figures to change over the next eight or nine months. But the Buffs already lost a ’24 QB commitment with Lewis’ departure. Former defensive ends coach Nick Williams, one of CU’s most respected recruiters, just left the Buffs for the same job at Syracuse. Tim Brewster, another bag man, took his shouting to Charlotte.

And have you looked at CU’s fight card for next September?

Best take care of business against North Dakota State in that home opener, kids. Because then it’s at Nebraska on Sept. 7, followed by a visit to CSU on Sept. 14. Even with a 12-team College Football Playoff field, those non-conference losses can come back to bite you on the backside. Unless you’re Nick Saban.

Asked Monday about the CFP next December, Sanders told 247Sports.com that “we plan on being in that situation.”

With Pencil Pat calling the plays?

Best plan for 6-6. Most likely.