On the same day as being named the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback of the Week, Wednesday, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders was named a semifinalist for the Davey O’Brien Award.
The Davey O’Brien Award honors the nation's best quarterback each year and its foundation names a quarterback to honor each week throughout the regular season.
Sanders is having another outstanding season, throwing for over 2,800 yards and 24 touchdowns. He has the sixth-most pass yards and third-most passing touchdowns in the country through his first nine games of the season.
The senior earned quarterback of the week after his performance against the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday. Sanders threw for just under 300 passing yards and had four total touchdowns (one rushing TD) in Lubbock, Texas.
Despite throwing 30 yards less than his average, Sanders more than made up for it with his legs, rushing for 16 yards (37 yards not including sacks) and a touchdown. Although his rushing total may seem low, Colorado is happy to see Sanders’s rush yards in the positive, considering he has a total of negative two rushing yards on the season (223 rush yards not including sacks).
Sanders has been playing at this level throughout his tenure as a Buffalo. Last year, he was also named both a Davey O’Brien National Quarterback of the Week and a semifinalist.
It was the first week of the 2023-24 college football season when Sanders and company put Colorado back on the map and was named the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback of the Week for the first time. In that game, against the 2023 National Championship runner-up TCU Horned Frogs, Sanders threw for 510 yards and four touchdowns and completed over 80 percent of his passes.
That was the start to his first Davey O’Brien semifinalist campaign, but Sanders was not named a finalist, losing out to LSU’s Jayden Daniels (winner), Oregon’s Bo Nix and Washington’s Michael Penix Jr.
This year, Sanders has a higher completion percentage and is projected to throw more yards and touchdowns.
Colorado has not produced a Davey O’Brien Award-winning quarterback yet. Koy Detmer was one of 10 finalists in 1996 and John Hessler was a semifinalist in 1997.
Out of 43 Davey O’Brien award-winning quarterbacks since 1981, 21 also won the Heisman Trophy, including five of the seven last winners.
Some of the other Davey O’Brien Award semifinalists are also many of the top Heisman candidates including Miami’s Cam Ward, Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart and Oregon’s Dillion Gabriel.
Ward leads the FBS in passing yards and touchdowns while leading the Miami Hurricanes to a 9-1 record and the chance to compete for a conference and national championship.
Dart is second in passing yards, trailing Ward by 100 and is seventh in completion percentage in the FBS. Last week, Dart helped the Ole Miss Rebels beat the juggernaut Georgia Bulldogs, keeping their SEC championship hopes alive.
Dillion Gabriel is currently leading the No. 1 seeded Oregon Ducks. Gabriel has the second-highest completion percentage in the FBS and ranks in the top eight in passing yards and touchdowns.
Sanders has three weeks left to convince the Davey O’Brien Foundation to make him a finalist, and helping Colorado to win out and make the Big 12 championship would surely help his chances.
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