The Colorado Buffaloes are going into the 2026 season with a lot of questions after a difficult 3-9 finish a year ago. They closed the campaign by losing seven of their last eight games, earned only one conference win, and struggled on both sides of the ball.

After the disappointing finish, head coach Deion Sanders publicly accepted the blame for Colorado’s struggles. However, former NFL MVP Cam Newton believes the pressure is only increasing on Coach Prime.

Cam Newton Warns Head Coach Deion Sanders About His Colorado Future

Speaking on his “4th&1” podcast, Newton warned that Sanders cannot afford another losing season.

“He keeps playing how he’s playing, losing how he’s losing; he’s not going to be in next year’s game (EA Sports College Football 27) either,” Newton said while questioning the coach’s long-term future.

“Because I tell you like this, brother, we are in a performance-based industry. Now, some would say, ‘Well, it ain’t like he’s at Alabama. It ain’t like he’s at Clemson or Georgia.’ He’s in a situation where Colorado hasn’t ever won since what, Kordell Stewart? That’s the last time.”

Colorado hasn’t won a national championship since 1990, the season before Stewart arrived, though it did capture the 2001 Big 12 title after his departure.

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Then, in 2023, Sanders inherited one of college football’s toughest rebuilding jobs. He took over a program that had gone 1-11 in the previous season and immediately turned Colorado into one of the sport’s biggest storylines.

Despite the renewed spotlight, Newton believes Sanders still has work to do before proving himself as a championship-level head coach.

“He brought more relevance to Colorado,” he added. “He made Colorado more famous than Colorado did… But this is where I’ve always stood with Prime. I don’t think Deion ‘Prime Time’ Sanders is in the best situation as a head coach.”

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And if you look at the last season, the situation only gets complicated.

The Buffaloes never found steady quarterback play, while their run defense ranked No. 133 out of 134 FBS teams. The offense struggled badly, and OC Pat Shurmur was stripped of play-calling duties in early November after the Utah loss, with tight ends coach Brett Bartolone taking over. Still, the coaching change did not solve Colorado’s biggest problems.

The offense continued to stall during the closing weeks of the season, and the development of quarterback Julian Lewis became another talking point.

However, Lewis recently revealed that he spent very little time studying opposing defenses during his freshman campaign.

“I’m actually looking at the defenses now,” Lewis revealed this week. “Last year, we wasn’t really looking at the defenses much, just kind of high school free balling.”

Those remarks also fueled concerns about how Sanders and his staff handled Lewis. However, Sanders believes next season will be different.

He reshaped the roster by adding 66 new players and hired new offensive and defensive coordinators to change the program’s direction.

Now the margin of error is very small, and only victories will determine whether they truly moved the program forward.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney finds himself among the coaches facing intense national pressure heading into next season after a disappointing finish in 2025. Immediately after the Tigers’ Pinstripe Bowl loss to the Penn State Nittany Lions, Swinney revamped his staff by firing offensive coordinator Garrett Riley and hiring Chad Morris.

Swinney has been very active in the transfer portal as well during the offseason, but after losing Cade Klubnik to the 2026 NFL Draft, his quarterback room is at its weakest and having not improved is a big gamble, with the season ultimately depending on how the offense holds up.

College Football Insider Questions Dabo Swinney for Not Acquiring a QB in Transfer Portal

Swinney has found himself in the crosshairs of fans and analysts alike for his reluctance to embrace the transfer portal. However, during the winter transfer window, the Clemson coach bucked that trend by signing roughly 10 transfers, mostly on defense to help rejuvenate his roster.

Most of those additions, though, came on the defensive side of the ball, while the offense appears to be trending in the opposite direction after averaging just 27.2 points per game last season, a significant drop from the 34.7 points it averaged the year before.

Swinney lost quarterback Cade Klubnik and OL Blake Miller to the NFL Draft. He now enters the season with four linemen who either lack experience or are returning from season-ending injuries, and despite that uncertainty, he chose not to add a quarterback through the portal, even though the five quarterbacks currently on Clemson’s roster have combined for just one career start.

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That’s certainly a big gamble, and college football insider Chris Hummer isn’t a fan of the decision.

“Well, I’m fascinated by Clemson,” he told CBS Sports. “In some ways, Dabo Swinney joined the modern era. They had double-digit transfers this year for the first time. They totally reset on the defensive side of the ball. Dabo had the press conference of the year calling out Pete Golding and Ole Miss. Like, it was classic Dabo.

“But like the question I have for Clemson and the thing I’m most curious about is like, what does their quarterback situation look like, and why didn’t they go get a guy in the portal? I’m very curious how Dabo talks about that room because I think there’s a ton of pressure on him and he’s very stubborn. So, we’ll see how that goes.”

Swinney has yet to settle on a QB1, but after spring practice, the competition has narrowed to redshirt junior Christopher Vizzina and freshman Tait Reynolds, with Vizzina currently leading the race.

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Vizzina redshirted his first season at Clemson in 2023 and has appeared in 14 games for the Tigers, including one start. He has completed 64 of 105 passes for 596 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 1 interception.

Reynolds, meanwhile, is a four-star prospect and the 11th-best quarterback in the class of 2026, per ESPN. He chose Clemson over football offers from Florida State, Miami, Oklahoma and Texas A&M, and had previously committed to Arizona State for baseball.

While the competition remains open, Vizzina has enormous shoes to fill after Klubnik posted a PFSN College QB Impact score of 79.2 with 16 passing touchdowns last season, and with Reynolds not far behind him, he could quickly find himself under pressure.

And if both don’t work with the Tigers’ already weak offensive line, Swinney will have a lot to answer for at Clemson.