PASADENA, Calif. — What good is a Louis Vuit­ton quar­ter­back if his han­dles keep falling off?

“It’s a strug­gle to run the ball,” CU foot­ball coach Deion Sanders said after a 28–16 loss to UCLA inside a Rose Bowl with thorns, the Buffs’ fourth defeat in five games. “And we’ve got to fig­ure that out, because now you’re one-dimen­sion­al. And it’s easy to stop a team when they’re one-dimen­sion­al and that’s who we are at this point in time.”

Shedeur Sanders, the coach’s son and the offense’s only hope, need­ed an injec­tion for the pain at half­time, thanks to a bruis­ing bunch of Bru­ins and sev­en sacks allowed. The kid wouldn’t need a shot if he wasn’t tak­ing so dang many of them in the pock­et, week after week.

Run the darn ball, Coach Prime. For your son’s sake, if noth­ing else.

From a play-call­ing front, the Buffs are too dang easy right now. CU’s play­ing check­ers in a Pac-12 full of chess mas­ters. Blitz Shedeur. Shad­ow Shedeur. Mash Shedeur. Rinse and repeat.

“He’s hurt,” the elder Sanders said of his QB1, who threw for 217 yards and a score even though the Bru­ins knew what was com­ing next. “He’s hurt­ing every­where. Trust me.”

Ease his pain. And his burden.

Mix it up. Go big or go home.

Yeah, yeah, we know. Worst offen­sive line in the free world. Papa Sanders spent at least a third of his postgame news con­fer­ence look­ing for a bus big enough to chuck his hog­molies under.

When I asked Coach Prime if run­ning the ball more might help Shedeur’s health, giv­en the big pic­ture, Sanders fired back quickly.

“The big pic­ture? You go get new line­men,” Coach Prime replied. “That’s the pic­ture. And I’m gonna paint it perfectly.”

That said, offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Sean Lewis’ play-call­ing — against one of the top defen­sive units in the Pac-12, grant­ed — was any­thing but a work of art.

Dur­ing the first three quar­ters, in which the Buffs either led or were with­in a score of the offen­sive­ly-chal­lenged Bru­ins, CU ran 20 first-down plays. Only two were designed runs. Anoth­er two became rush plays on Shedeur scram­bles — he net­ted 13 yards on one jaunt, one yard on anoth­er — while two more were sacks.

On sec­ond-and‑4 or less through three quar­ters, the Buffs logged three snaps and called a designed run once. On third-and-four or less through three stan­zas, CU had two shots … and threw twice.

In the red zone? Six plays. Zero designed runs. One sack, one scram­ble. Poor Dylan Edwards looked lone­li­er than the Rock­ies’ third base coach.

Look, we get Prime’s reluc­tance. To a point. Nation­al­ly, only Bay­lor (2.72), Arkansas (2.66) and BYU (2.60) entered last week­end aver­ag­ing few­er yards per first-down run than CU’s 2.83. The Buffs were 105th in sec­ond-down rush attempts (82) and 125th in aver­age yards per sec­ond-down car­ry (2.96).

It’s the “giv­ing up” that dri­ves you nuts.

The Buffs head­ed into UCLA tied for 99th nation­al­ly in rush attempts on third down and 3 yards or few­er (just 17) while con­vert­ing on 13 of them (77%). As for throw­ing off third-and‑3? CU hit Sat­ur­day night tied for sev­enth nation­al­ly in attempts (15) while man­ag­ing a first down on eight of those tries.

“I think we com­mit­ted to (the run) on first down, (and it become) sec­ond and 15,” Coach Prime stressed. “Those are the type of things you don’t want to do and get behind the 8‑ball. First downs are so vital. First downs are everything. …

“And when we’re get­ting neg­a­tive yards on first down, that’s a tremen­dous loss, because now you know you’re going to throw the ball on sec­ond down. And they’re call­ing their defens­es per­tain­ing to that loss.”

The Bru­ins are Iowa with a spray tan. UCLA’s already adopt­ed a Big Ten West look a year before they join that league: Iffy quar­ter­back­ing, killer pass rush, punt to win. It was a sneak pre­view of that Utah matchup to come on Thanks­giv­ing week­end. In all the wrong, phys­i­cal, painful ways.

“Yeah, I’m a lit­tle banged up right now,” the younger Sanders admit­ted after the game. “But that’s just what hap­pens after games … (when) you’re play­ing against tough oppo­nents, a great rush, defen­sive (pass rush), that is what happens.”

It’s hap­pen­ing far, far too often.

Run the darned ball, Coach Prime. You can still show­case your kid with a full­back. Or two tight ends. Or a lit­tle play-action.

“The hard­est thing to acquire is line­men,” the elder Sanders said. “When peo­ple have a good one, you rarely see line­men jump (into the trans­fer por­tal) and go to dif­fer­ent schools. I think we have some guys that (are) gonna be good with a lit­tle sea­son­ing. But over­all, we just don’t have the fight or the pas­sion to do what we want to do.”

Shedeur has the goods to car­ry a lot of things by him­self. Just not a pro­gram. Not up this hill. Not in this conference.

“I’m a lit­tle biased because I’m his father, but I think we have the best quar­ter­back in the coun­try,” Prime said of Shedeur. “I don’t think any oth­er quar­ter­back could put up with it, stand and deliv­er like (he does) week-in and week-out and (while) tak­ing the beat­ing that he’s taking.”

No father wants that kind of bag­gage on his tab. And it’s awful­ly hard to win a Heis­man if you’re too busy lying on your back.

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analy­sis on Denver’s teams.

Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analy­sis on Denver’s teams.