Deion Sanders isn’t repeating the same mistakes that plagued the Colorado football team last year.

An embarrassing, 41-7 loss to Northwestern in Week 3 was bad enough. To make matters worse, Coach Prime caught some of his players laughing and joking afterwards.

On Tuesday, he confirmed that a few Buffs are no longer on the roster.

“It’s a few guys who are not on the team anymore,” Deion Sanders said Tuesday.

It remains to be seen exactly which players were removed from the team but it’ll be revealed before too long. Either way, the players in question weren’t dismissed for an isolated incident.

Coach Prime says it was a result of a pattern of behavior detrimental to the team.

“It’s never one (incident),” Deion Sanders said Tuesday. “The players will tell you that I’m the most loving, giving and forgiving man you could ever meet but when it starts being conduct detrimental to the team, that will set us back. If you don’t care about the team and you just care about you, I have a problem with that.

“A year ago, I didn’t put my foot down in it enough. It lingered a little bit and then it imploded. I’m not doing that (again).”

It appears that lessons were learned from last season’s debacle but it remains to be seen if the changes work. Colorado is the most penalized team in the Big 12 entering Week 4 and last week’s loss at Northwestern felt all too familiar to a year ago.

“The dismissals suck in the moment,” Colorado linebacker Tyler Martinez said Tuesday. “But when you look at the big picture, if it’s going to help us win then we have to do it. It is what it is.

“I’m sorry to see those guys go but we have games to win.”

Deion Sanders and the Buffs head to Baylor for their Big 12 opener this weekend.

Follow Colorado Buffaloes beat reporter Scott Procter on X.