Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders needed only two words to sum up his plan for beating Kansas State on Saturday. Asked during his Tuesday press conference what it would take to get a win, Sanders kept it simple.

“Be consistent,” he said.

Honestly speaking, the follow-up was more revealing than the answer. Within seconds, Sanders admitted the one thing his team does consistently is draw flags.

Elliott Arnold and Damon Greaves quietly fixed a mess

Sanders started with the one phase he believes is finally under control, and he sounded like a coach fishing for a little credit.

“I feel like the last couple weeks, special teams wise, I haven’t heard you guys ask any special teams questions,” Sanders said. “I told you how easy it was to bring solvency to that. I guess you didn’t believe it, but we pretty much did. We just gotta continue and be consistent in that area.”

He has a point. In the loss to Texas Tech, Colorado missed two field goals, botched a fake punt, lined up with nine players to block a kick and let a punt be downed at the 2-yard line, right before a pick-six on the next snap.

Against Utah two weeks later, kicker Elliott Arnold made his only field goal try and all three extra points, while punter Damon Greaves averaged 44.6 yards and pinned three punts inside the 20. For a special teams unit, silence from reporters is the highest compliment.

Penalties keep following Deion Sanders

Be that as it may, the rest of his answer read like a checklist of everything else that still needs fixing.

“But defensively, offensively, running the ball, throwing the ball, creating turnovers, eliminating the penalties, we gotta have some kind of consistency,” Sanders said. “That’s the only thing we’re consistent in, is getting penalties. And that don’t make sense to me.”

Ironically, the numbers back him up. Colorado has committed 66 penalties through seven games, an average of 9.4 per game, with 590 yards surrendered and a Big 12-high 84.3 penalty yards per game. The 11 flags at Oklahoma State last Saturday added another 84 yards to that total. That total leads the entire conference.

Back in September, Sanders called the penalties “hard to fathom.” A month later, the same habit keeps showing up in the box score, no matter the opponent or the stadium.

Deion Sanders puts the struggles on himself

Looking beyond the penalty talk, the most striking moment came when Sanders refused to spread the blame around the locker room.

“We just haven’t been able to get it together,” Sanders said. “That’s not ’we.’ I haven’t been able to get it together.”

Coaches rarely say that out loud in the middle of a slide, and it gives his message some real weight heading into a Halloween matchup at Folsom Field. Consistency sounds simple until a team has to prove it for four full quarters, and Sanders knows where that work starts.

“But we gotta do better,” Sanders said. “Gotta prepare much better.”