Colorado safety Randon Fontenette felt the Buffaloes' locker room change after the Utah loss, and he did not need long to explain why. Colorado coach Deion Sanders had broken his own habit by telling the Buffaloes he was proud of them after a defeat, and the veteran defensive back said the message hit at the right time.
“Yeah, I definitely felt the shift, especially with the way Coach Prime approached us,” Fontenette said during Colorado’s media availability this week. “It was definitely different, and I felt like, in this moment that we’re in, we definitely needed that as a team.”
Sanders admitted in his own postgame comments that he never does that after a loss, which explains why the players noticed it so quickly and why it stuck with them days later.
Randon Fontenette knows how fast a season can turn
Fontenette then got honest about the danger Colorado was facing.
“So that really gelled us together and kind of brought us closer to each other because we’re two and four; it’s easy to fall apart right now,” he said. “So that really helped us really gel together even more.”
He is right to say it out loud. Colorado has lost four consecutive games and sits at the bottom of the Big 12 standings alongside Kansas, and seasons like that tend to split locker rooms into groups that blame each other.
Fontenette is also speaking from experience as a player who has seen more than one program. He started at TCU, moved to Vanderbilt and landed in Boulder, so he has been in enough locker rooms to know when one is about to crack.
Randon Fontenette plays on a defense that had to meet itself
Cohesion is a bigger deal for this group than most. Colorado returned no full-time defensive starters this season, which meant players were still learning to work together during spring practice.
A defense built that quickly needs trust more than anything, and trust is hard to hold onto during a losing streak. Sanders seemed to understand that, which is why one change in tone after the Utah game carried so much weight with players like Fontenette.
Randon Fontenette believes the message stuck
Fontenette did not stop at describing the moment. He made it clear the locker room still believes a turnaround is possible.
“So I’m very confident in these next six games to win,” he said. “Yeah, definitely.”
Coming from a former four-star prospect who played quarterback and safety in high school at Brazosport, the confidence sounds like an honest read on his teammates. He watched this group take a gut-punch loss and pull closer together, and he trusts what he saw.
Sanders made a choice he says he never makes after a loss, and one of his most experienced defenders is telling everyone it worked.
For a 2-4 team with a rebuilt roster, a locker room that still believes is the most valuable thing Colorado took out of the Utah game.
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