Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, left, and Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders walk back to the locker room before a game against Texas Tech at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock, Texas, on Nov. 9, 2024. (CU Athletics)
While everyone else on the field thought the play was over, Colorado’s Shilo Sanders didn’t hear a whistle, so he kept going.
Picking up a loose ball at the 6-yard line with less than a minute to play, Sanders waltzed untouched into the end zone for touchdown that put a cap on CU’s 41-27 win at Texas Tech on Saturday.
CU’s Arden Walker had knocked the ball away from Texas Tech quarterback Behren Morton and most of the players thought it was an incomplete pass. As it turned out, it was a fumble.
“We play until we hear the whistle,” CU head coach Deion Sanders said. “That’s what we practice and (Shilo) does that in practice quite a bit. He really does. He plays to the whistle, scooping the ball, or these guys picking the ball off, getting to the sideline. Big play; it put the game out of reach. Great play.”
The game-sealing play by Shilo helped the Buffs (7-2, 5-1 Big 12) vault to No. 18 in the Associated Press rankings ahead of this Saturday’s matchup with Utah (4-5, 1-5) at Folsom Field (10 a.m., Fox).
It was also a big play for Shilo, who has had a roller-coaster season that included missing three games with an injury.
“It was really exciting, because we’ve had a lot of talks overall, just on anything, and I feel like he got the attitude back,” CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders said of his brother. “I think the injury set him back a little bit mentally and everything. I think it did a little bit, whether he admitted or not, but I think so. So then knowing that he’s going out there, he’s hitting how he’s supposed to, he’s doing everything how he was back (before), it’s happy, and it shows that he’s on the right track.”
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Shilo also had six tackles against the Red Raiders, increasing his total to 37 on the season.
Game time set
On Monday, the Big 12 announced that CU’s game on Nov. 23 against Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., is slated for a 1:30 p.m. MT kickoff and will be broadcast nationally on Fox.
It will be CU’s sixth game on Fox and ninth overall on national network TV, extending the school record. With three additional games on the flagship ESPN, CU will have all 12 regular season games on national TV for the first time in its history.
Kansas is playing its conference home games at Arrowhead, the home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, while its own stadium gets renovated this year.
Big 12 record
Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show is coming to Boulder for Saturday’s matchup between the Buffs and Utes. It will be the fifth time this season that Big Noon Kickoff has visited a Big 12 school, the most in conference history since the show began visiting campuses in 2019.
This week will be the third time Big Noon has gone where the Buffs are playing. Fox’s pregame show visited Central Florida on Sept. 28 and was at Texas Tech on Saturday.
Saturday will mark the seventh time since the start of the 2023 season that Big Noon will be on location for a CU game. That’s tied with Ohio State for the most in the country during that time. CU is 5-1 with Big Noon on location in the last two seasons.
Notable
As of Monday, CU is a 10.5-point favorite against Utah. It’s just the third time in the last 61 conference games (dating back to 2017) that CU is a double-digit favorite. … CU’s defense regained the Big 12 lead for sacks, with 29, after having seven against Texas Tech. The Buffs have had seven sacks twice in the last three games. In the previous 297 games, dating back to 2000, they had at least seven sacks just four times.