Look, Sanders isn’t an NFL QB or anything, but he’s way better than most people think.
He was literally the only piece of the offense this year that wasn’t down with an injury for at least part of the year. I think we had like 2-3 games all year where the offense was (more or less) 100% healthy.
At the beginning of the year, we had like 1-2 scholarship WRs available for the first month of the season; and outside of Tay Martin, the entire group are all freshmen and sophomores, which led to a lot of inconsistency in the passing game in general.
Toward the end of the season, we started losing pieces again, with the biggest being losing the starting center Godlevsky and then Warren for the Big 12 title game, which is what forced Sanders to throw like 50 times and throw the 4 picks. That’s not his game.
When Sanders had a somewhat healthy offense around him he was mostly great this year, culminating with yesterday putting up nearly 500 yards of offense against a really good defense.
So to answer the question, no I don’t think the defense will be as good next year, but it will still be pretty decent. I think the offense will be significantly better with the WR group being a year older as well as some new pieces coming in on the OL and RB group.