The biggest concern in the aftermath of a humiliating loss like the one Colorado suffered last week on the road at Utah is that it beats you twice.
Deion Sanders knows it. He also knows that teams will use the exact game plan against the Buffaloes moving forward. Colorado can't stop the run - Utah racked up over 400 yards on the ground. Teams would be silly not to spam runs against them.
Colorado couldn't pick up any of Utah's blitzes on Saturday night. So you can expect that the Buffaloes are going to see a steady diet of blitzes the rest of the season. In the locker room after the loss, Coach Prime told his team that they gave the blueprint away that everyone will now use to try and beat them.
"We got to fix this," Sanders said in the locker room. "Right now, we just gave a blueprint away. You know, next week let's run on them, throw on them...blitz them. They can't stop it. Blitz them. They're not going to block nobody... That's what we're up against."
Of course, Colorado's flaws weren't exactly a secret. The line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball has been a consistent weakness during Coach Prime's tenure in Boulder.
A tiny ray of optimism in the midst of embarrassment for Colorado
The one positive you can spin out of Colorado's demoralizing 53-7 loss to Utah is that they didn't outright quit in the second half. Sanders urged them not to at halftime, and trailing 43-0, Colorado was only outscored 10-7 in the second half. Part of that was Kyle Whittingham calling off the dogs, but part of it was also that Colorado didn't lie down over the last 30 minutes.
It didn't make the loss any less humiliating, but it does give a small bit of optimism that the Buffs can still recover from it.
That kind of loss is a difficult one to flush away, but it's what has to happen at this point for Sanders and his team. Colorado has another game that's now just four days away. Facing Arizona at home, it's a must-win for the Buffaloes if they want to keep bowl eligibility hopes alive.
A loss would drop Colorado to 3-6, leaving them needing to win out in order to get to six wins. As unrealistic as a bowl game feels at this point in the aftermath of the Salt Lake shellacking, it's the only thing the Buffs have left to play for.