When you buy street food on a tight budget, getting bad side dishes is fine, but you cannot afford a bad main course. Right now, Deion Sanders is learning that exact same rule in Boulder, Colorado. The Buffaloes are in a tight spot, and football analysts are calling out Coach Prime for trying to run an elite offense with a budget QB.

On Locked On Buffs, analyst Kevin Borba made the case that Colorado needs to spend aggressively on its next QB rather than trying to find another bargain in the transfer portal. The Buffs have already shown they can piece together a defense with players from smaller programs. QB, Borba argued, is a different game.

“You have to go all in on quarterback,” he said. “That’s the one position you can’t go cheap at. And Colorado needs to go all in, especially if Deion Sanders is still there because he hasn’t proven he can win without a quarterback not named Shedeur.”

That advice comes at an awkward time for Deion Sanders. Colorado has struggled to move the ball against quality opposition, and changing QBs has not produced the turnaround the coach wanted. Now the bigger question is whether the program can find a proven answer without paying the kind of money that has become commonplace in the NIL market.

On paper, people talk about bad play-calling or defensive gaps, but everything ties back to one main issue: total quarterback instability. When you keep flipping between Julian Lewis, Isaac Wilson, and backup options, the whole offense loses its rhythm, and big games quickly slip away.

Colorado entered the season with Julian Lewis as the starter, hoping the young QB could give the offense some stability. Instead, things unraveled over consecutive losses. The former 5-star struggled badly in a 41-7 defeat against Northwestern, throwing for 168 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions. 

The following week against Baylor, Julian Lewis managed just 75 passing yards in the first half while taking three sacks. That’s when Deion Sanders pulled him at halftime. Isaac Wilson took over and offered a brief reason for optimism. He threw for 156 yards and a touchdown, helping Colorado fight its way back into the game before late turnovers spoiled the effort.

Believing a QB change could turn things around, Deion Sanders handed Isaac Wilson the starting job for the next matchup against Texas Tech. That experiment went nowhere. In his first career start, the QB threw three interceptions in a 29-7 loss, including a pick-six from his own end zone. So yeah, Colorado has a QB crisis. 

That’s why Kevin Borba believes Colorado should put a substantial share of its NIL resources into securing a QB who has already demonstrated he can handle the job. He pointed to Colorado’s defensive roster as evidence that the program can find useful talent without chasing the biggest names. 

Borba also said that WR is a position where the transfer portal provides plenty of options. QB is where he draws the line. That is the heart of his argument. You can save money at other spots, but it won’t mean much if your QB keeps handing games away.

Colorado has never really tested the high-end QB transfer market under Coach Prime because they had Shedeur Sanders locking down the job. But across college football, rival programs regularly drop huge NIL packages to buy proven transfer starters. If Sanders wants a quick turnaround, he has to follow that exact same blueprint instead of hoping budget options work out.

Chad Brown, a former Colorado LB, has also called on Deion Sanders to own his share of the mess.

“That’s dereliction of coaching duty in my mind,” he said on Denver radio. “You are the coach; it falls on you. Particularly, if you said, ‘I handpicked every player on this roster.’ So if you’re the coach who’s handpicked these players and they don’t perform up to expectations, unfortunately, I think you should take accountability.”

That criticism adds another layer to the QB debate. Deion Sanders must identify the problem, find a solution, and own the results.