Greg Biggins, 247Sports
No program has made bigger gains over the last six months than Colorado. Since hiring Deion Sanders as their head coach, the Buffaloes have been on a historical recruiting-and-transfer-portal hot streak. As a result, tickets for their regular season home games are sold out for the first time in decades, and expectations for the team are sure to rise dramatically in 2023.
However, this program had a deep hole to climb out of, and there’s still a ton of work to do before they’re ready to compete with true Power 5 contenders. At the top of the list, they’ll need to recruit more firepower and depth at the game’s most critical position.
For the foreseeable future, the Buffs will be starting Coach Prime’s son, Shedeur Sanders, at quarterback. He’s a four-star recruit from the class of 2021 who’s one of several players to follow Prime from Jackson State.
After Sanders, there’s no clear line of succession at QB, though.
With an eye on changing that, Colorado has offered two of the top quarterbacks in the class of 2025.
First, there’s Orange Lutheran (Calif.) four-star quarterback TJ Lateef. He’s listed at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds and ranked ninth among QBs in his class. Lateef is also ranked No. 17 in California and 148 nationally in his class.
Lateef also has offers from Georgia, Miami, Arizona, Arizona State, Boston College, Cincinnati, Florida State, Texas A&M, and Indiana. There doesn’t appear to be any clear favorite, as On3’s prediction model has Arizona State as a very weak favorite at just 12.1%, followed by Arizona at 10.6%. Oregon State is next at 9.1% and Colorado is currently 7.6%.
The other Sophomore signal-caller they’ve offered is Murrieta Valley (Calif.) four-star quarterback Bear Bachmeier. Bachmeier (6-foot-1, 205 pounds) is ranked just one spot lower than Lateef at his position, No. 19 in the state and No. 165 in the nation.
Thirteen other programs have made offers, including Purdue, Oregon, Miami, Kansas and Stanford. There’s also no real leader here, with On3 projecting San Diego State as the favorite at 11.3%.
Read more at Buffaloes Wire.
