For the third straight year, Colorado is hoping for improved special teams play with fall camp right around the corner.

That phase of the game has yet to be a strength under Deion Sanders and the Buffaloes enter the 2026 season without a dedicated special-teams coach with the staff planning to split duties.

Despite having a relative unknown at kicker, there is optimism CU can take a step forward in every aspect of special teams with key players coming back at multiple spots.

Let’s meet the entire group:

Punter

We have to start with the elder statesman among the specialists and the unquestioned leader of the room, Damon Greaves.

Entering his second season with the Buffs, Greaves was honorable mention All-Big 12 in 2025 after ranking sixth in the conference in yards per punt average and with 14 kicks inside the 20-yard and 13 of 50+ yards.

CU’s punting unit as a whole could use some work, however. As a team, no one in the Big 12 allowed more punt return yards than the Buffs’ 260, although that came on a conference-high 67 total punts. The team still ranked fourth worst in the conference in net-punt average, indicating plenty of opportunities to work on containing opposing returners.

Kicker

For the first time in five years, Coach Prime will have a new kicker to put his faith in as veteran Alejandro Mata is out of eligibility after playing his third and final season in Boulder last fall, finishing as the program’s all-time leader in field goal percentage at 81.6% (31-for-38).

After the spring, Sanders said redshirt freshman Elliot Arnold will be the Buffs’ top kicker and kickoff specialist heading into the fall, beating out Grambling transfer Josh McCormick for both jobs with the latter reportedly entering the transfer portal this summer as a track and field athlete.

Arnold did not see any game action last year at CU but was a part of a Tennessee Division II Class AAA championship team as a senior at McCallie School. He’ll have big shoes to fill not just in the kicking game as Sanders raved for years about his trust in Mata, but also on kickoffs as Buck Buchanan helped CU drastically improve on touchbacks last season, putting the ball through the end zone on 42-of-53 kickoffs last season.

Return specialists

The Buffs’ lone representative on Phil Steele’s preseason All-Big 12 first team was actually at kickoff returner and it’s dynamic sophomore Quentin Gibson.

Affectionately known by his teammates as “Q for 6,” Gibson appeared in all 12 games as a freshman and ranked sixth in the country in total kickoff return yards with 597, good for an average of 23.9, which was behind only Kansas’ Emmanuel Henderson Jr. in the Big 12.

CU had much less success, albeit on limited opportunities, in the punt return game. Gibson only returned four punts all season for a total of 29 yards, while fellow freshman wide receiver Quannell Farrakhan Jr. led the team with five returns for 33 yards with a long return of 19 yards.

The team had a total of 79 punt return yards, second worst in the Big 12.

Farrakhan returns and should get more chances to return punts, but the leading candidate to hold that spot this fall should be Tennessee transfer Boo Carter.

Carter should start at inside (or nickel) cornerback, but he was most effective with the Volunteers as a punt returner, earning SEC All-Freshman honors in 2024 as a return specialist. Across his first two seasons, Carter had 23 punt returns for 343 yards (14.9 average) with a long return of 40 yards.