By admin 
BOULDER, Colo. – Et tu, JuJu?
In June 2024, Colorado football put Julian Lewis on a pedestal, a literal golden throne. Shedeur Sanders, one of the most popular college quarterbacks in the country, stood above the 5-star prep prospect from Georgia and looked down, proudly. As cameras snapped, Sanders placed a set of car keys into the teenager’s right hand.
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Perfect timing. Perfect marketing. The picture went viral. A few months later – on “The Pat McAfee Show,” naturally – Lewis, heir to Deion Sanders’ football kingdom in Boulder, formally announced his commitment to CU.
The picture of Shedeur handing the keys of the program to JuJu said 1,000 words about where Buffs football was heading.
Two years later, though, CU fans find themselves saying the same four words, over and over and over again: What the heck happened?
“The truth of the matter is, maybe (Lewis) got rushed out there last year,” Tim Jenkins, a longtime quarterback instructor in Parker, told me when I brought up Lewis, who was CU’s starter for the first four games before getting benched at Baylor on Sept. 26. He hasn’t played since. The Buffs, on their bye this week, are 2-3.
“Like everybody, you watched Deion Sanders play growing up and he was just such a great figure,” said Jenkins, the former ThunderRidge, NFL/CFL/Fort Lewis QB and founder of Jenkins Elite football training. “But, simultaneously, I would never want my coach out there saying what (Sanders) was saying after the (Texas Tech) game about the quarterbacks in general. I don’t care if it’s Lewis or (Isaac) Wilson. That’s a tough environment, when your coach is putting you on blast. Meanwhile, we’ve got nine guys on the field for special teams, right? So I just think (there’s) probably an important overarching (question) of, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ “
Heck of a question. In fact, Sanders was asked that question in two or three different ways during a surreal postgame news conference last Saturday night, following a 29-7 homecoming loss to No. 11 Texas Tech.
“I would love JuJu to come here and he’d tell you what (happened),” Sanders said at the time. “(Moving him from first to third team), no, that’s not how it went down … it didn’t happen like that.”
Which only raised more speculation. Was JuJu gone? Did he bench himself? Sanders has the power to make anyone address the media at any time, regardless of protocol – ask Ben Finneseth. Yet Coach Prime spoke of his teenage quarterback as if that decision, that control, was out of his hands. Sanders is well-versed at deflecting questions he doesn’t like, changing the subject or judo-flipping something back at a reporter by launching into his own cross-examination. Only instead of defending one of CU’s players, the NFL legend seemed to be lining up buses to chuck his quarterbacks under.
“It’s always an open competition,” Sanders continued. “Every darned day is an open competition. That’s the position that is somewhat disabling us and disarming us. Every day is like that.”
‘Our trust is there’
Has Coach Prime been fair to his heir? On3.com estimated that Lewis arrived at Boulder in the winter of 2025 as a millionaire, thanks to endorsement deals the young man signed while playing at Carrollton (Ga.) High School, a southeastern football factory. Although the last six weeks surely can’t have helped the No. 10’s stock in the transfer portal, let alone with NFL scouts.
Messages to Julian Lewis’ agent; to Lewis’ longtime QB coach; and to JuJu’s father, T.C., seeking comment received no response as of Friday afternoon. In early August, just before CU opened preseason camp, I spoke with T.C. Lewis about rumors that JuJu had considered transferring, and about the hiring of offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, inventor of the high-tempo “Go-Go” offense, to replace Pat Shurmur.
“Our trust is there with (Marion), 100 percent,” the elder Lewis told me. “And I spoke to him back when the (transfer) portal opened, when he first got the job (at CU). And we’ve believed in (CU) collectively as a team.
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“I’ve never considered myself to be the smartest dude in the room, but at the same time, I’ve got access to anybody I need in football. We collectively sat down (and) said, ‘No, we’re in a good situation. We’re going to stick this out.’ “
Five games later and heading into Saturday, CU ranked last in the Big 12 in scoring (18.6 points per game), last in team passer rating (128.09), last in red-zone scores (nine), last in red-zone-touchdown-percentage (64.3%), next-to-last in red zone trips (14), and first in punts (24).
On message boards and on call-in shows, Lewis, who turned 19 late last month, has shouldered much of the blame. He’s completed 64.2% of his throws while tossing six touchdowns against just two interceptions. Yet those numbers also come with a caveat – four of those TDs came in a 52-21 rout of Weber State on Sept. 12. Against Football Bowl Subdivision opponents this season, Lewis has thrown for two scores with two picks and sports a passer rating of 107.54 – which would rank last among Big 12 QBs who’ve thrown at least 75 passes so far this season.
In back-to-back losses at Northwestern (41-7) and at Baylor (23-13), the young Buffs signal-caller looked as if he couldn’t see all the routes developing in front of him and didn’t trust the protection in that surrounded him.
The CU athletics website lists Lewis at 6-foot-1, but up close, he’s closer to 6 feet without cleats. Sanders can’t coach height. And Lewis’ combine measurables have always been a major red flag for another local QB guru, Warren McCarty of Warrior Football.
“I think he’s another in a long list of 5-star quarterbacks who were highly overrated coming out of high school,” said McCarty, a Longmont-based QB trainer and football consultant. “Physically, there’s not anything special about his game. He throws a really nice deep ball, but his arm talent’s not incredible. He’s not a threat to run the ball … he’s not terrible … he lacks the traits that Marion needs the quarterback to have in order for that (CU) offense to Go-Go.”
‘There’s no fixing this’
It took a village to mess this up. CU is preparing to host No. 12 Utah at Folsom Field on Oct. 17, but Lewis still hasn’t addressed “what happened,” as Coach Prime put it. Social media speculation has already started that JuJu has one foot out the door, even though he was also photographed Monday shooting a Taco Bell commercial in Boulder with Buffs running back DeKalon Taylor in his CU uniform. Is No. 10 still living mas – or is there no mas when it comes to his future in Boulder?
“They need a divorce, a separation, there’s no fixing this,” McCarty said. “(Lewis) needs a fresh start somewhere.
“I think they need to figure out what they have with the other young QB (Kaneal Sweetwyne) that they signed … it’s not fixable with JuJu Lewis. What they need the quarterback to be able and capable of doing, he can’t do. And I think behind the scenes, there’s probably way too much bad blood at this point.”
Jenkins puts more of that on the CU coaching staff and on Sanders, who was part of Lewis’ evaluation and eventual courtship. JuJu, Wilson, Kaidon Salter and Ryan Staub all have two things in common: None of ’em have won big in Boulder, and none of ’em look like Shedeur. CU hasn’t posted a 300-yard passing game as a team against a Power 4 defense since a 52-0 rout of Oklahoma State in late November 2024
“If we’ve consistently gotten kids that had success previously, and then they come here and don’t (succeed), that feels more like an infrastructure thing,” Jenkins noted. “I think you have to look at it and go, ‘Hey, we’re letting these kids down somehow with the program and system that we have.’ That doesn’t mean it’s all broken up at CU or that Coach Prime should lose his job, because I don’t think that.
“It’s just super convenient to say, ‘Hey, these kids that were paying a million bucks to, they (stink), we’ll get new ones.’ But that’s not the reality. Again, there’s a reason every quarterback who goes to Indiana, they all of a sudden look like a dude.”
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This story was originally published October 11, 2026 at 2:43 AM.