There's a lot more confidence in Boulder coming out of the bye week, thanks to an impressive 24-17 takedown of Iowa State two weeks ago. Colorado desperately needed a marquee win, and they got it against the then-No. 22-ranked Cyclones.
The win got Colorado to 3-4 on the season, keeping their hopes of making a bowl game alive. It's still an uphill climb, however, with three of the team's final five games on the road and only a small margin for error remaining to try and get to 6-6.
The first run on that ladder is this weekend in Salt Lake City as the Buffaloes travel to take on Utah. Even with the uncertainty around Utah starting QB Devon Dampier, the Utes are a heavy home favorite. FanDuel has Utah listed as a 13.5-point favorite over Colorado, and nobody really seems to be giving Coach Prime's team a chance.
But Deion Sanders is as confident as ever. He said earlier in the week that his team's mindset is to go to Salt Lake and 'dominate.' He talked further on Thursday about what Colorado has to do to beat Utah:
"We gotta feel like we're going there down by seven and we gotta overcome that adversity to begin with, and then we gotta overcome several adversities in the game," Sanders said. "We gotta play twice as good as we would normally play."
Deion Sanders thinks Colorado has to play 'twice as good' to beat Utah
Coach Prime knows it's a monumental task to go on the road and beat Utah. Rice-Eccles is a difficult environment, and Colorado will have to play its best game of the season to date in order to have a chance of pulling the road upset.
The Buffaloes have not found success on the road yet this season. This is just their third road game so far, and they've lost the previous two by a combined 30 points. They were physically dominated by Houston on the road in September and lost by two touchdowns to TCU in Fort Worth despite the game being close for most of the night.
Colorado dominated Utah last season in Boulder, but these are two new teams top-to-bottom. The Utes are much improved, and beating them in Salt Lake City - something Colorado hasn't done 2011 - would be one of the biggest regular-season wins since Sanders took over.
Coach Prime knows the task is great, but he's exuding confidence that his team will feed off of.