College football’s spring transfer window opened Tuesday with a number of programs suffering player departures, including several expected starters for Colorado and second-year coach Deion Sanders. The Buffaloes have heavily built their current roster ahead of the 2024 season through the portal and now face an exodus of talent coming out of spring camp.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the following Colorado players were in the transfer portal: offensive tackles Savion Washington and Isaiah Jatta, safety Myles Slusher, offensive lineman David Conner, defensive linemen Chazz Wallace, Zach Blackwood, wide receivers Jacob Page and Tar’Varish Dawson.
Edge rusher Devee Harris plans to enter as well, according to Buff Stampede. He played in all 12 games last fall with 14 tackles. A few of those players are sizable losses for a team coming off a 4-8 season in Sanders’ first campaign with an arduous schedule ahead this fall during the Buffaloes’ first season in the Big 12.
Blackwood was a 2024 signee out of the JUCO ranks.
Washington leaves arguably the biggest void given Colorado’s restructured offensive line. He started nine games last season with the Buffaloes and played 660 snaps at right tackle. Colorado’s offensive front gave up more sacks than any Power Five program nationally last season, so an overhaul was expected.
Five-star 2024 signee Jordan Seaton is expected to be a true freshman starter at one of the tackle spots.
Sanders said recently he isn’t down with NIL enticement in recruiting at Colorado and said he prefers luring prospective student-athletes to the Buffaloes through old-school development with the promise they leave his program much-improved as football players. During the 2024 recruiting cycle, Sanders put his focus on enhancing the program’s offensive line.
Money should never be a top priority during the courting process, he said.
“I don’t attract that type of players,” Sanders said earlier this month, via Front Office Sports. “I attract the type of player that wants to be great, that understands he has a window of opportunity and he has to have a commitment to excellence. There are players who are playing for a bag, which growing up in the environment, you can’t blame them, you can’t fault them.
“If you’re going to give up a bag, you’re gonna have players playing for a bag, so I do understand it. I may not condone that’s your focus because I’ve always thought if you just focus on being great, the bag is gonna find you.”
While the advent of NIL compensation itself is not inherently concerning to Sanders, it is the collectives and use of payments as recruiting inducement from which issues arise, the Colorado coach says.
“NIL is not a problem with me,” Sanders previously said on The Joel Klatt Show. “Collectives are. What kid out of high school is notable enough that a CEO of a major company is going to lay it on the line for a kid nobody knows? There are maybe four guys in all of college football that we’ve seen in a commercial nationally. We happen to have two here in Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter.”
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Colorado expects to be active in the spring portal window.
