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Winds on the ground have almost zero bearing on the flight times. The jet stream 30000 feet up is a whole different weather system. I've gone TATL 3x in the past 10 days and the jet stream is pretty strong. I'm flying west again tonight and expect that it will be a bit longer than originally expected, though I do have the slight advantage of starting farther south so the impact should be lower.

As for CO running a more optimistic schedule I haven't seen much evidence of less schedule padding or tighter turns than the other airlines. I'm pretty sure they even block the westbounds longer in the winter to account for it to some extent. And with many planes doing turns and "getting back" the time after a delayed outbound the overall impact on downline flights should be pretty minimal. Of course, if you have some evidence to support the claim I'd love to see it.