College Football Picks: With No Marquee Games, Upset Alerts

LOS ANGELES — The Broncos’ four-year contract extension with Garett Bolles comes with a couple of interesting wrinkles. The team used a pair of option bonuses and five void years at the end of the term to suppress Bolles’ cap numbers early in the deal. According to NFL Players Association data and OvertheCap, Bolles’ cap number this year actually bumped up slightly to $20.8 million.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1869917815651832123 Audric Estime has his first NFL touchdown. The Broncos’ rookie running back ran in a 3-yard touchdown midway through the first quarter against the Chargers on Thursday. The score gave Denver a 7-0 lead. Denver had seven carries for 43 yards on the drive, including three carries for 12 yards by Estime. Want more Broncos news?

For years, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders has trusted his son, Shedeur, with the ball in his hands. Shedeur Sanders is arguably the best quarterback in the country, but the record-breaking Buffaloes star is heading to the NFL after the Alamo Bowl against BYU on Dec. 28 (5:30 p.m. MT, ABC). Replacing Shedeur won’t be easy, but the QB room for 2025 already looks stacked, with two-year backup Ryan Staub being joined by former Liberty star Kaidon Salter, who is planning to play his final season of college football in Boulder; and five-star incoming freshman Julian “JuJu” Lewis. Related Articles College Sports | Football recruiting: Former Liberty QB Kaidon Salter transferring to CU Buffs College Sports | Colorado State and Utah State suing Mountain West over penalties for exiting league College Sports | CU Buffs’ Deion Sanders: QB commit Julian Lewis has “unbelievable” similarities to son Shedeur Sanders College Sports | Michael Vick talks to Sacramento State and Norfolk State about head coaching jobs College Sports | CU Buffs lose LB Nikhai Hill-Green to portal, add former Alabama DL The battle to start in 2025 will be intriguing, but there’s no question that Deion Sanders and the Buffs are bullish on the long-term future of Lewis, the highest-rated prep quarterback ever signed by the program. “I think smart coaches at this level understand what has worked for them, and they try their best to replicate that,” Coach Prime said of Lewis.

SAN JOSE — Players who get traded from a contender to a rebuilding team often find themselves with a new, better opportunity, but Nikolai Kovalenko may have hit the jackpot. Kovalenko showed plenty of promise in his rookie NHL season, moving around the lineup to fill in where needed for an injury-ravaged club.

The Colorado Rapids are just about draft-ready. The club, which has been slowly amassing picks ahead of Friday’s MLS SuperDraft, is slated to make the No. 8 overall selection and has seven total picks. With that flexibility, the Rapids could get active in the draft-day trade market. Along with the eighth pick, the Rapids have two more first-rounders at Nos.

ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — Lindsey Vonn didn’t just pop into the hospital one day, get a new titanium knee and then decide on the way out that she wanted to return to downhill ski racing. It’s been a long, calculated process involving several minor and some major knee surgeries, careful vetting of the medical issues involved and then months of on-snow testing in New Zealand, Austria and Colorado to see how her body and new knee would react at age 40. So now that she’s preparing to step into a World Cup starting gate this weekend for the first time in nearly six years for super-G races in St.