DENVER – For Shedeur Sanders, Friday night wasn’t ideal.

Colorado’s senior quarterback takes his work seriously and never likes to waste practice time.

Getting on the field in front of a few thousand fans, however, forced Sanders and the Buffaloes to dial it back a notch.

“You’re not seeing much because we’re not doing some of our route combinations and not putting in some of the packages that we would normally put in and giving Shedeur the usage of the whole field and some things that he wanted to do,” CU head coach Deion Sanders said after the Buffs held a practice at All-City Stadium. “So he got a little frustrated because he wanted to do a few more things, but we can’t do that out here in front of the whole country.”

The time is soon to come that Shedeur and the Buffs can let loose, as the season opener on Aug. 29 against North Dakota State (6 p.m., ESPN) is quickly approaching.

Friday night, however, was about getting in some work in a different environment.

After nearly three weeks of practices behind closed doors on campus in Boulder, CU loaded busses on Friday to work out on the home field of Denver Public Schools squads, located on the campus at Denver South High School.

All 5,000 of the free passes to the event were claimed, although it was estimated that about 3,500 to 4,000 fans were attendance. It wasn’t a packed house, but still a quality turnout for an evening event that was announced just one week earlier.

“This is phenomenal for the university, this is phenomenal for the young men,” Coach Prime said.

It is believed that this is the first time CU has ever conducted a preseason practice off campus, but Coach Prime wanted to shake things up a bit.

“Usually in camp, everybody hits a little lull,” he said. “We try to catch them before they hit that so they can bring some excitement, so they can push through just the whole monotonous of the same old, same old routine. And that’s what this was about today. I think they did a phenomenal job. I’m proud of them.”

Coach Prime reported that there were no injuries sustained during the practice. Star cornerback/receiver Travis Hunter did not participate, but not because of injury.

“Travis is good,” Coach Prime said. “We just wanted to give him some rest. He’s great. He can’t wait to see the sellout crowd in our first game.”

Asked if the event brought back memories of his own high school days, at North Fort Myers (Fla.) High School in the 1980s, Coach Prime joked that it didn’t because All-City Stadium, with its artificial turf and 5,000-seat bleachers, was nicer than what he played on as a prep.

“We had a grass field (at North Fort Myers), and I think we had one side of the bleachers,” he said. “It was nothing like this. And this probably (would have been) the biggest crowd I would have ever played in (front of during) high school. This probably was a state championship type of game, and I never made it that far.

“But I’m glad we got to come deep in the community. … I just wanted to change the atmosphere, come over to Denver. The fan base is phenomenal everywhere around the country but we just wanted to come over and show some love, because we got a tremendous amount of love and appreciation and respect from this part of the city as well.”

Originally Published: August 17, 2024 at 1:24 a.m.

Matt LaFleur’s trip to Denver with the Green Bay Packers allowed him a chance to reminisce about one of the key mentors who helped him become an NFL head coach.

LaFleur took his entire team Thursday night to Shanahan’s Steakhouse before the Packers held a joint practice Friday with the Broncos at the team’s practice facility in Dove Valley. The two teams will play an exhibition game Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High.

Mike Shanahan is coaching royalty in this city. He’s also one of the most important figures in LaFleur’s life.

“Coach Shanahan has had a tremendous impact (on me),” LaFleur said. “He gave me my first position job in 2010 with Washington as the quarterbacks coach. I learned so much from him, not only X’s and O’s-wise, but how to manage a staff. The attention to detail he would put into it was like nobody I’ve ever been around. All of us, when you look back on it, we’ve had a lot of guys that have gone on to be head coaches, and I think it’s because we learned the right way from Coach Shanahan.”

LaFleur is 56-27 as the Packers coach, leading the team to a pair of NFC championship appearances in his five seasons. Long before he became one of the most successful young head coaches in the NFL, he was part of one of the most famous staffs in recent league history.

He was quarterbacks coach for Washington with Shanahan from 2010 to ’13. In both the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Shanahan’s coaching staff had five future NFL head coaches on it: Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator; Sean McVay coached the tight ends; Raheem Morris was the defensive backs coach; and Mike McDaniel was an offensive assistant.

Washington won the NFC East in 2012 with rookie Robert Griffin III at quarterback but went 3-13 the following year. Jay Gruden replaced the elder Shanahan as head coach, and LaFleur spent 2014 as quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame before returning to the NFL and eventually being named Packers head coach in 2019.

Shanahan, who has been a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the coach/contributor category in both 2022 and 2023, was not at the dinner. LaFleur said he had a prior commitment.

“I’ve never been around someone who could focus as long as he could. I remember, back in 2012, when we were getting ready (for the draft). We knew we were going to draft Robert Griffin and we were getting ready to implement the zone read,” LaFleur said. “We didn’t want to talk to anybody around the league about it.

“He would just sit in there for hours. We had this cut-up that was a couple hundred plays long. It was Baylor’s offense. It was the Carolina Panthers with Cam Newton. It was Denver, with what they were doing with (Tim) Tebow. I’ll never forget. … We would watch it all, and we’d be in there for a couple of hours, and everybody is somewhat exhausted from the process and he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s run it back to the top.’ We all looked at each other like, ‘How is this guy still doing this?’ He had some stamina when it came to watching tape. He was so thorough in the draft process with how he evaluated players.

“I think there were just a ton of lessons that we took from our time there.”

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Originally Published: August 16, 2024 at 5:12 p.m.