Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter power Colorado to a 31-26 win over North Dakota State

Colorado’s stars led the Buffaloes to a win over North Dakota State to open the season on Thursday night.

The Buffaloes beat the FCS powerhouse 31-26 as QB Shedeur Sanders threw for 445 yards while CB/WR Travis Hunter played nearly the entire game again and had seven catches for 132 yards and three touchdowns.

Hunter’s final two touchdowns of the game were the deciding scores. He caught a 13-yard TD from Sanders halfway through the third quarter to give the Buffs a 24-20 lead. And then he made an incredible catch midway through the fourth quarter to put Colorado up by two scores.

Hunter is perhaps the most dynamic player in college football. No one plays on both sides of the ball like he does and no one depends on Hunter to do so much like Colorado does. The former five-star recruit is so good at both positions that he could be a first-round pick if he just played with one unit.

After North Dakota State's Cam Miller cut Colorado's lead to five with 2:19 to go, the Buffaloes needed to get a first down to end the game. They almost didn't, but North Dakota State committed a pass interference penalty on third down that effectively ended the game.

Or should have, anyway. Colorado inexplicably threw the ball on the next play even though NDSU had just one timeout remaining. The pass fell incomplete, and it meant the Bison got the ball back with less than 40 seconds to go for a last-ditch drive that ended with a Hail Mary pass that was caught just five yards from the end zone.

There are still lots of questions for Colorado

This was not a win that makes you think Colorado is going to take the Big 12 by storm in 2024. After a 3-0 start to 2023, Colorado looked like it was going to be a player in the Pac-12. And it subsequently went 4-8 and won just one conference game.

Thursday night, Colorado’s defense got gashed in the first half and the run game struggled once again. Oh, and the coaching decision to have Sanders throw the ball after the pass interference penalty with less than two minutes to go was horrible, too.

Deion Sanders’ top transfer portal priority over the offseason was to improve the offensive line. Shedeur was sacked over 50 times in 2023 and the run game averaged just 2.3 yards a carry. The Buffaloes added a host of transfers and five-star freshman Jordan Seaton ahead of 2024, but it’s clear the line is still a work in progress.

Colorado rushed 23 times for just 59 yards against North Dakota State. Yes, the Bison have been incredible in college football’s second tier over the past decade and have a program that would be a perennial bowl team at the FBS level. But Colorado averaged just 2.6 yards a carry and the longest run of the night for the Buffaloes was 11 yards.

The lack of a run game may put too much on Shedeur Sanders’ shoulders. He threw for 445 yards on just 34 pass attempts, but Hunter and Jimmy Horn (seven catches for 198 yards and a TD) likely won't get that open every week. Especially against Big 12 teams if the Buffaloes can’t run the ball.

Next week's game against Nebraska will be a much better test for the Buffaloes. They'll be facing a freshman QB in Dylan Raiola, but Nebraska should be much better than it has been in recent seasons. And the crowd in Lincoln will assuredly be raucous. It's great that Colorado avoided an embarrassing loss on Thursday night, but they'll likely need more than Sanders and Hunter to get through this season.