Deion Sanders is going to build a Colorado team that is markedly different from his previous ones. Their top talents like Travis Hunter, Shedeur and Shilo Sanders, LaJohntay Wester, and Jimmy Horn Jr. have hit the NFL road. Coach Prime is relying on existing seniors, rookies, and transfers to continue the upward trend of the Buffaloes. And he hasn’t done a bad job in getting new players to make up for the losses of Colorado’s stars. One new entity that is expected to make a mark in 2025 is opening up about why he chose Colorado, and his bond with a key staff member.

Coach Prime made a huge addition to the staff in February. Marshall Faulk, the Hall of Famer running back who pushed the Indianapolis Colts to better heights, joined Sanders’ staff as the new RB coach. His hire seemed to be the final piece in the puzzle for 4-star RB Dekalon Taylor. Deion Sanders was able to get him out of the transfer portal from Incarnate Word. Colorado’s RB room is yet to shake the bad rap off itself, but Taylor brings a lot of good to Boulder. He finished last year with 909 yards and 9 TDs, and weighs 180 lbs. He’s on the smaller side of the average RB, but is a brilliant addition nonetheless.

In a June 14 chat with Daily Camera’s Brian Howell, Taylor explained how Faulk built on their relationship to get him to pick Colorado. “The conversations were really just talking about ball and my personality, who I am as a person first. And he got to really know me and then from there we escalated to talk ball and just understanding ball on a on a grander scheme of how he’s going to get me ready for the draft or how he’s going to get me ready for future playing ball and even after ball’s over, how he’s going to get me to grow into like a young man,” Taylor said.

He admitted he didn’t watch a whole lot of the star RB when he was in the NFL. “I personally didn’t get to watch him growing up, but I did watch his highlights. He’s one of the guys that I watched like out of Barry Sanders, him and Chris Johnson. Like I kind of studied a lot of those guys and took bits and pieces from their game, added it to mine,” he said. However. Taylor also admitted that he still hasn’t looked back on the veteran RB’s past. “It’s about the same. I didn’t pick up any more than any less. I was just excited to have him as my coach,” he told Howell.

Marshall Faulk went as the 2nd round pick in the 1994 Draft and signed a contract worth a whopping $17.2 million. That year, he won both the Offensive Rookie of the Year Award and Pro Bowl’s Most Valuable Player award in the same year. Faulk was also an instrumental piece of Mike Martz’s Coryell-styled offense for the Los Angeles Rams. He accumulated 2,429 yards from scrimmage, breaking Barry Sanders’ 1997 record of 2,358 yards. Arguably one of the finest NFL RBs in modern times, he seems like a great answer to Colorado’s RB room, which needs some major reworking of strategy.

Faulk’s biggest task ahead is to improve a run game that ranked last in the country in the past two years. It is still unclear where Taylor will feature in the depth chart. He will join Dallan Hayden, Micah Welch for playing time, along with Charlie Offerdahl. Another new player in the mix is Coastal Carolina transfer Simeon Price, who committed just this week. Faulk enters CU’s coaching staff as the 3rd Hall of Famer to follow, after Warren Sapp. Deion Sanders seems to be the connecting factor between the two, and Sapp had a few words about his relationship with the HC.

Warren Sapp reveals how Coach Prime delivered upon a promise

Warren Sapp was a controversial hire for Colorado. He feared that his lawsuit-laden past would impact the program. But Deion Sanders continued to push for the Hall of Famer. Joining as CU’s pass rush coordinator, Sapp had worked some changes into a revived-looking team in 2024. They went up from their 4-8 score in 2023 to 9-4, and just missed out on the Big 12 championship game.

It was something that Coach Prime was determined to achieve after 2023’s failures. Sapp revealed in a June 9 chat on the Kenny and JT podcast, “[Coach Prime] came back to me that second year and we went to talking like through certain situations in football, and he looked at me and said, ‘I’m not gonna go against my gut. Last year I went against my gut and it cost me’.” Deion Sanders took the bull by its horns when he first arrived in Boulder. He turned around the roster, making 80 new additions. But woes caught up to him soon, preventing him from making a mark as an HC.

Year 2, however, was a different story. He saw Travis Hunter go as the No. 2 pick in the draft and win the Heisman trophy. Stats shot up for Deion Sanders, who was finally getting more and more people to take a look at Colorado Football. He did what he promised Warren Sapp. And for that, the coach has nothing but love for Sanders. “I love him; I love [how] every morning he wakes up with that same passion, that same fire that gleams in his eye,” he claimed.

Year 3 is going to be a difficult task for Coach Prime. The players with whom he made those strides last year are no longer in Boulder. But that does not mean Coach Prime was sitting idle. He went to the transfer portal and addressed his biggest problems by getting Dekalon Taylor into his struggling RB room. So, will he and his new coach propel the Buffaloes a notch higher this season?