If there’s a panic button in the Colorado football office, head coach Deion Sanders isn’t reaching for it at this point.

“We’re 1-1, and you want a bunch of changes?” he said Tuesday as his Buffaloes (1-1) prepared for a visit to in-state rival Colorado State (1-1) on Saturday (5:30 p.m., CBS).

“Before you guys even sense it, I’m out there at practice every day. I’m watching film every day. I’m falling asleep watching darn tape, so and I’m going over all the practice grades as well as game grades, and seeing what we got ahead of us and what we did today. So we have a lot of knowledge in house that you guys aren’t privy to, that we get to see tape every day. So when we make a change or we don’t, there’s reason, and sometimes you got to trust that we’re in the inside.”

The Buffs didn’t look good, especially on offense, in a 28-10 loss at rival Nebraska on Saturday, a game that wasn’t as close as the score would indicate.

Yet, Sanders and his team are looking forward while knowing the importance of Saturday’s game in Fort Collins.

“Really, accountability, understanding there’s urgency,” Sanders said about his main message to the team this week. “I challenge them if your person that you love the most, that you care for the most, was depending upon your performance at practice today, how would you go about it? That was the challenge today. So that’s how we’re going about it. We are holding everybody accountable, including myself, in sense of urgency.”

It may be too early in the season to call Saturday’s game a must-win, but it’s certainly vital as the Buffs wrap up nonconference play. The Big 12 portion of the schedule begins when Baylor visits Boulder on Sept. 21. Four of the eight games after that are against teams currently ranked in the Associated Press top 20, with another against a Kansas team that just dropped out of the rankings this week.

In preparing for CSU, the Buffs don’t want to forget Saturday’s game in Lincoln. Rather, they hope to learn from it.“Just go to the practice field, go to the film room and be very nitpicky on how we messed up, what we messed up on,” safety Cam’Ron Silmon-Craig said. “I messed up on a lot of things. So it’s just people just looking in the mirror.

“These guys, we want to be better. These guys are not making excuses on why we should have won, or why we didn’t, why we do this, but we really look each other in the mirror. Nothing changed (in terms of season-long goals). I mean, our plan is still our plan. This is just a hiccup in the road.”

To make sure the Nebraska game was just a hiccup, the Buffs have to be ready to rock in Fort Collins.

Canvas Stadium doesn’t hold anywhere near the 86,906 fans that showed up in Lincoln last week — capacity is about 41,000 — and there’s sure to be a higher percentage of Buffs fans in the seats than there were last week, but it’s still going to be an emotionally charged rivalry road game for a second week in a row.

“The benefit is you’ve got to get up,” Coach Prime said of his team playing back-to-back rivalry games. “Prayerfully you learn your lesson from a week ago, and you got to get up. You got to come out ready to play. From the first snap on, you got to be ready to play in all positions, all phases, coaching included.

“We got to be ready to coach. We got to be ready to play. We got to be ready to execute. You don’t have time to wait to the second half to try to hit the engine light and turn the car on. You can’t do that. You got to be ready to go. If you prepare well during the week, you don’t have to worry about being inconsistent. If you prepare well to study, you’re gonna be OK, and that’s what we’re impressing upon our team.”