Colorado lost 29-7 to Texas Tech on Saturday, and by the time Isaac Wilson took a hard hit with 14 seconds left on the clock, the outcome had been settled for most of the fourth quarter. He'd already thrown three second-half interceptions, including one that went back the other way for a touchdown. He came out of the game. A true freshman, Kaneal Sweetwyne, had to take the last snap of a blowout because the guy who was supposed to be handing it off had just left the game.
That sequence happened. Nobody disputes it. What people are arguing about is whether it needed to happen, and the honest answer is no.
Football players get hurt on any play, at any score, in any quarter. A freak hit with 14 seconds left in a one-score game is just football, and nobody would be writing this column if that's all it was.
But this wasn't a one-score game. It was a 22-point game in the fourth quarter, with Wilson already picked apart by Texas Tech's defense for three interceptions. At some point a coaching staff has to ask what it's still trying to win. More garbage-time yards for a quarterback who's already lost the plot? A touchdown that moves the final score from embarrassing to slightly less embarrassing? None of that is worth the kid taking one more hit from a defense that had made him look overmatched all afternoon. There's a true freshman on the roster who can take snaps in that exact situation. That's what backups are for. Use him three minutes earlier and nobody's writing about an injury today.
This isn't the first time Sanders' program has taken heat over in-game decisions in the final minutes of a lopsided game. He caught plenty of criticism, including from national analysts, over his clock management in last season's opening loss to Georgia Tech, and he defended it instead of owning it. Different game, different year, same coach making the same kind of call: keep playing the way you want to play no matter what the scoreboard and the moment are telling you. Programs develop habits. This looks like one of them.
Nobody has reported that Wilson has a serious injury, and nobody should guess at one. What we do know is he was dropping back in a decided game, took a hit, and left. Whatever he's dealing with now didn't need to happen on that snap, in that situation, with a backup standing right there in a helmet.
Wilson deserves some credit here. He kept throwing into a defense that was dismantling him instead of packing it in, and that counts for something on a Colorado team that's now dropped two straight and heads into its bye at 2-3. Competing hard is the player's job. Managing the risk around that effort is the coach's job, and Sanders didn't do it.
Colorado's quarterback situation was already a mess before Saturday. Now it might be worse, and the only person who decided it was worth the risk was standing on that sideline the whole time.
