Nothing came easy for Colorado as they lost 54-7 to the Washington Huskies.

Here's what interim head coach Mike Sanford said after the game.

Opening Statement

It was obviously a challenging game. It was just really tough from the start, I thought we came in with the mentality of wanting to, a game plan that I wanted for us coming in was to try to keep number nine off the field as much as humanly possible and wanted to run the football and just play to where we're healthy as an offense and stop the run obviously. Hopefully keep nine on the sideline and obviously that's a style that you can play, if you're marching the ball down the field you're taking care of those scoring opportunities, and we just failed to do that. I think, just overall, we wanted to win this game in the trenches and still believe in the growth that we have in our fronts, in particular, seeing some positives in the offensive line group that we've seen in the last couple of weeks, but hats off to Washington. That was the intent of coming out of the game and wanting to run the football to establish the run, but they were good up front, to be honest, and they moved their front a lot. They were very active and ultimately that led to us not capitalizing on the opportunities that we needed. That's a really good team, I said it this week and in my press conferences before the game, leading up to it that I think right now they're playing as good at football as anybody in our conference and having seen Oregon, SC and what Washington is at right now in the quarterback play they have and the athletes they have and then really the O line D line crew.. They're as good as anybody in our conference right now. And I think that's what I'm gonna I'm gonna tip my hat to coach DeBoer and most importantly, those players.

On Washington’s game plan to attack the run

I think some of that too was just in response to some of our coverage stuff that we've been able to shore up. Obviously sometimes you do rob Peter to pay Paul in a sense where we obviously know that these guys like Bo Nix, Caleb Williams and Michael Penix in back to back to back weeks, if you just let them just pick apart your man coverage or you know, if you're playing zone coverage with really only seven out in coverage and you’re not getting that home against some he's really good offensive lines, it's gonna be a long day. Obviously that's the adjustment they make and I think that their backs were good. their O-line is good, a lot of respect for their overall plan and how they execute.

On Fontenot

I like the way he's playing. That was the game plan going in to really try to feed him the ball and that's obviously important for us that we stay on the field. The problem is we got to convert on those third and mediums. That's obviously what we knew going in, that was gonna be the key to be able to continue to feed Alex Fontenot is just being able to stay on the field on his third downs.

On missed opportunities in Washington territory

I do think they have really good edge rushers. I think they did what they do. We had some nudge protections in the problem is the more you utilize both a running back and tight end to really solidify the protection, oftentimes, you're not getting as many players out in the concept. That's the thing about having really good edge rushers, it forces an offense’s hand to be able to help the tackles in protection. I think one of them we had a nudge to the boundary side and the field defensive end got home and forced to throw. We knew going in there were gonna be some challenges, but the problem with it is when you start utilizing extra players to help in the protection planet, it does short you in terms of route concepts.

On problems on special teams

That to me was what kind of got the score line out of sorts, or, more so than it was. I think up to that point where we're moving the ball, it's a couple, it's a three, two, three possession game and then all of a sudden snap over our head, safety. Then we'll give up field position to score, then kick off the turn, they kind of split it, it was uncharacteristic of how we played special teams-wise this year. It was an error, but I still think that unit particulars played well throughout the course of the year through the ups and downs. I think today was certainly not one of their better performances and obviously was detrimental to the overall score in the game.

On the team being checked out

I think halftime, that was a time where I challenged the team that, are we truly what we say we are? Are we going to fight for each other, be a brotherhood? And what I would say is that I think the response in the second half was much better. I think a lot of frustrations were boiling over the end of that second quarter. It got emotional. Let's just call it is, there's a lot going on with our overall program and every single person that's involved in the program from the support staff, through the players and the strength staff, there's a lot of uncertainty. It becomes an emotional situation when certain things happen on a field like that becomes even more overwhelming at that point in time. But I will say that, what I saw in the second half is I saw a team that did not check out. I think the frustrations boiled over in the end of the second quarter and then in that second half even J.T. [Shrout] himself, he was pretty banged up. Nothing like structurally wrong with them, but essentially, the advice from the trainers was, "hey, man’s leg is locked up and stiff. You can't essentially extend his leg.” I was immediately going to get a move on and J.T. came up to me and before he threw that touchdown to Montana, he had a look in his eyes like, “I'm gonna continue to fight.” I pointed that out in the locker room to our team just for them to understand that essentially, there are a lot of guys that it's not just J.T. there's a lot of players on the team that are fighting through adversity. The life lessons that we're going to be able to attain from this myself, our staff or players to come out on the other end of this thing knowing that you truly stayed in the fight as hard as bad as it was, that's going to set you up for whatever situation comes your way for the rest of your life.