NCAAF 2024 - WEEKS ZERO & ONE

[hammerva]

Well they not be sure of their QB but that Florida State kicker is something 

I am not sure how much we should care about this but -.1 yards in the air seems really bad

Edited August 24 by hammerva

[EVA]

A worrying 1H for FSU. You expect them to take a little step back from last season, but playing it super safe against a frisky but still outmanned GT is not what you wanna see from them.

2H game plan has to involve left it rip downfield in the passing game. GT 2nd- and 3rd-level defenders are just screaming upfield right now.

[BobbyWhioux]

30 minutes ago, EVA said:

GT run game is so fun to watch. 14 plays, 8 minutes off the clock, 7 points.

this kind of drive is basically a snuff film for me now.  Take that, video game offense

[EVA]

You usually have to watch a service academy game to see numbers like this

 

[EVA]

I was planning on throwing together some super brief conference previews this week, just identifying my picks to win, darkhorses, likely disappointments, spoilers, etc. Georgia Tech was absolutely going to be my spoiler pick for the ACC, but now nobody will believe I saw this coming lol. I expect them to collect a scalp or two this year, but I wasn’t thinking FSU could be one.

[EVA]

BOOM. Huge upset in Game 1 of the season.

Obviously a lot of time to improve, but FSU has a BIG problem at QB right now.

[hammerva]

Georgia Tech almost gave it away on the botched snap.   And if they probably needed every yard of that 3rd down

Jesus the trophy to win this game is so much better than the BCS playoff trophy

Edited August 24 by hammerva

[Cobra Commander]

so can Florida State blame this loss on the committee too?

[EVA]

“Tallahassee calling…?”

[BloodyChamp]

We Seminoles had as many returning starters this game as we did for last game. So there’s that . 

[Brian Fowler]

So now we get to week one and oh boy is that Florida/Miami game feeling like a must win for both coaches.

[RIPPA]

 

[hammerva]

So the Connor Stallions/Michigan sign stealing documentary is up on Netflix and man this is something and very recommended.   You can see where his complete obsession of Michigan football came from with his parents.   Probably was listening to the Michigan Fight Song in the womb.    Kid didn't have much of a chance.     Probably the wildest thing that his first sign stealing (legal in this case) was when he was assistant at Navy and the first game of the year was against Ohio State of all teams.   Maybe we should be lucky that his major obsession was only Michigan football because between his experience in the Naval academy and his ultimate drive to succeed, he could be beyond dangerous.   

Anyone that thinks Harbaugh wasn't really involved in this is completely destroyed early in this.  He was hired because of his  incredible reputation in Navy and from this apparently secret society of sign deciphers/stealers in the media and coaching.   The thing is it seems if he would have just kept it on the field (which from the looks of it was great about it), this whole scandal would be nothing because it is legal.   Whatever sympathy you might have had for Connor Stallions about his firing pretty much went out the way when you see that Dave Portnoy was buddies with him and it was just two attention whores being attention whores.    

Only major negative was this "BroOhio" guy.  No idea what purpose this was except to show that Ohio State fans are just as obsessively weird as Michigan when it comes to message boards and float the "how does he afford these 50 yard line tickets"

[EVA]

Okay, let’s start burning through some quick n’ dirty conference predictions:

The New 17-team, bi-coastal Atlantic Coast Conference

Champion: Clemson. Let me be clear: This is more about the ACC field regressing than it is about Clemson getting its playoff mojo back. FSU is worse and Clemson will be steady. Advantage: Tigers. I do think there’s reason to believe this could be the Cade Klubnik breakthrough season. Lots of recent data supporting talented-but-underachieving QBs breaking through in year 2 under a new offensive coordinator.

Darkhorse (non-consensus favorite who could win it): I will now say something nice about Miami. I would continue to not bet any money on them winning a championship under Mario, but I’ll say this—They went out and bought the most dynamic QB in the transfer portal this offseason. If any QB is built to overcome terrible coaching, it’s Cam Ward. He could carry the Canes to the conference title game, especially if the rest of the field is as bad as I think it will be.

Disappointment (top 25 team most likely to finish unranked): Ok, I’m not going to cheat and say Florida State after last weekend (I do think they’ll finished ranked, too). I’m going with NC State here. I don’t get the Wolfpack love at all. I know there’s a lot of intrigue around Grayson McCall taking over at QB there, but he hasn’t actually been very good in like 2 years. He’s not a program elevator. Traditionally, when NC State has been great, they have an elite defense and a favorable schedule (namely, getting Clemson at home). They have neither of those things this season.

Spoiler (non-top 25 team most likely to shake up the conference): So, Georgia Tech was my pick, but it feels like cheating to pick them here after they already played spoiler last weekend. So I’ll give you another one: Virginia Tech. Much like their fellow Tech, VT quietly got their act together in 2024 behind a dual-threat QB and a punishing running game, winning 5 of their last 7. Their defense looks better on paper, too. They will rack up a shocking win or two in 2024 (keep an eye on their home date vs. Clemson on 11/9).

Most Likely to Be Looking for a New Coach: Pitt. Pat Narduzzi has seemingly done everything in his power to dismantle every ounce of goodwill the 2021 Kenny Pickett season generated. The Panthers have gotten worse every year since, bottoming out at an alarming 3-9 last season. It’s so bad that the famously offensively regressive Narduzzi had to finally give in and hire a hotshot spread no-huddle OC from FCS. We’ll see how that works out (I’m guessing the Nard Dog has them back under center, handing off on Iso 30 times a game by Week 6). But what’s even more worrying is how the defense has regressed, too. They were bad in 2024. And when a team starts to struggle in what is supposed to be the head man’s specialty area, the end is often not too far away.

Edited August 27 by EVA

[Brian Fowler]

16 hours ago, hammerva said:

So the Connor Stallions/Michigan sign stealing documentary is up on Netflix and man this is something and very recommended.   You can see where his complete obsession of Michigan football came from with his parents.   Probably was listening to the Michigan Fight Song in the womb.    Kid didn't have much of a chance.     Probably the wildest thing that his first sign stealing (legal in this case) was when he was assistant at Navy and the first game of the year was against Ohio State of all teams.   Maybe we should be lucky that his major obsession was only Michigan football because between his experience in the Naval academy and his ultimate drive to succeed, he could be beyond dangerous.   

Anyone that thinks Harbaugh wasn't really involved in this is completely destroyed early in this.  He was hired because of his  incredible reputation in Navy and from this apparently secret society of sign deciphers/stealers in the media and coaching.   The thing is it seems if he would have just kept it on the field (which from the looks of it was great about it), this whole scandal would be nothing because it is legal.   Whatever sympathy you might have had for Connor Stallions about his firing pretty much went out the way when you see that Dave Portnoy was buddies with him and it was just two attention whores being attention whores.    

Only major negative was this "BroOhio" guy.  No idea what purpose this was except to show that Ohio State fans are just as obsessively weird as Michigan when it comes to message boards and float the "how does he afford these 50 yard line tickets"

Well, outside the truly crazy, nobody has ever really argued that Harbaugh didn't know that Stalions was stealing signs. The question is if he knew how. Which, honestly, given that it appears the NCAA didn't find any smoking gun evidence, we'll probably never know for a fact who knew what. I'm pretty sanguine about what will come from all of this though. 

[EVA]

Ok, now I’m going to take a swipe at what will easily be the most difficult conference to predict this season. I heard someone say they wouldn’t describe this conference as “deep” so much as “wide,” and that sounded perfect to me. There’s like 6 teams that could win this league, and I wouldn’t consider any of them to be elite national contenders.

The Big 12

Champion: Oklahoma State has made it to the conference championship game 2 out of the last 3 seasons, but they haven’t actually claimed the title since 2011 (the first year there was no B12 title game and they were famously left out of the national championship game). My thinking here is that A) OK ST is roughly as talented as any of the other contenders (and have perhaps the best RB in the country), and B) they are an insanely veteran team with around 10 starters back on both sides of the ball. In situations where there is parity in terms of talent level, experience usually makes the difference in the biggest games. Oh, and as easy of a target as Mike Gundy makes himself at times, he is actually pretty friggin’ great coach at the end of the day. They also have a pretty good schedule, catching Utah at home and with Kansas State on the road being their only other significant challenge in the regular season.

Darkhorse:  Kansas. Again, this is a veteran team (30 seniors), and if Jalon Daniels can stay healthy for a full season, they have a legitimate darkhorse Heisman candidate at QB who can carry them to greatness. The schedule has perfectly aligned for them, too; they miss Utah and OK ST during the regular season. In 2023, with Daniels missing significant time and a much tougher schedule, Kansas still won 9 games (and lost 3 of their games by 7 points or less). This could be Kansas’s best season since Mark Mangino got to meet Obie in 2007.

Disappointment: Arizona. It’s really wild to me to see the Wildcats as a consensus Top 25 team. Sure, thanks to a spiteful booster who was bound and determined not to let Jedd Fisch take *all* the good players with him to Washington, the roster managed to survive a late-breaking coaching change with most of its important pieces intact. But I’m very skeptical of the new coaching staff, and you inevitably see teams experience culture shock when they transition to a new conference. The battles in the trenches are a lot more fierce in the Big 12 than the late Pac-12, and I really wonder how they’re going to hold up over the course of the season. Did I mention that they open Big 12 play with back-to-back road games at Utah and Kansas State? They’re gonna get behind the 8-ball in a hurry.

Spoiler: It has been four years—it is time for Iowa State to have another good season. Not to sound like a broken record, but this is a veteran roster, and the places where they happen to be young features some of the most exciting skill position talent that ISU has had in a loooooong time. The Cyclones won 5 of their last 7 regular season games in 2023, so this group was clearly putting things together late in the season. Now, their schedule is ROUGH (they draw Utah, K-State, and Kansas, plus some tricky road games  like a visit to West Virginia), so they’re not going to challenge for the title like they did in 2020. But they’re going to take down somebody important.

Most Likely to Be Looking for a New Coach: Colo—just kidding. It’s Baylor. Dave Aranda won the B12 title in 2021 but has posted a losing record in his other three seasons in Waco. There are even some similarities between Aranda’s situation and Narduzzi’s profile at Pitt. Both are defensive gurus whose defenses now stink. Aranda is taking over defense playcalling for himself this year (a sure sign of desperation) and, like Narduzzi, is even bringing in a new OC to run a more wide-open offense. He clearly understands how urgently he needs to turn this around. Baylor has a lot of money, and they’re not going to keep throwing it away on the more of the same product they’ve gotten for 3 of the past 4 seasons.

[Brian Fowler]

3 hours ago, EVA said:

Ok, now I’m going to take a swipe at what will easily be the most difficult conference to predict this season. I heard someone say they wouldn’t describe this conference as “deep” so much as “wide,” and that sounded perfect to me. There’s like 6 teams that could win this league, and I wouldn’t consider any of them to be elite national contenders.

The Big 12

Champion: Oklahoma State has made it to the conference championship game 2 out of the last 3 seasons, but they haven’t actually claimed the title since 2011 (the first year there was no B12 title game and they were famously left out of the national championship game). My thinking here is that A) OK ST is roughly as talented as any of the other contenders (and have perhaps the best RB in the country), and B) they are an insanely veteran team with around 10 starters back on both sides of the ball. In situations where there is parity in terms of talent level, experience usually makes the difference in the biggest games. Oh, and as easy of a target as Mike Gundy makes himself at times, he is actually pretty friggin’ great coach at the end of the day. They also have a pretty good schedule, catching Utah at home and with Kansas State on the road being their only other significant challenge in the regular season.

Darkhorse:  Kansas. Again, this is a veteran team (30 seniors), and if Jalon Daniels can stay healthy for a full season, they have a legitimate darkhorse Heisman candidate at QB who can carry them to greatness. The schedule has perfectly aligned for them, too; they miss Utah and OK ST during the regular season. In 2023, with Daniels missing significant time and a much tougher schedule, Kansas still won 9 games (and lost 3 of their games by 7 points or less). This could be Kansas’s best season since Mark Mangino got to meet Obie in 2007.

Disappointment: Arizona. It’s really wild to me to see the Wildcats as a consensus Top 25 team. Sure, thanks to a spiteful booster who was bound and determined not to let Jedd Fisch take *all* the good players with him to Washington, the roster managed to survive a late-breaking coaching change with most of its important pieces intact. But I’m very skeptical of the new coaching staff, and you inevitably see teams experience culture shock when they transition to a new conference. The battles in the trenches are a lot more fierce in the Big 12 than the late Pac-12, and I really wonder how they’re going to hold up over the course of the season. Did I mention that they open Big 12 play with back-to-back road games at Utah and Kansas State? They’re gonna get behind the 8-ball in a hurry.

Spoiler: It has been four years—it is time for Iowa State to have another good season. Not to sound like a broken record, but this is a veteran roster, and the places where they happen to be young features some of the most exciting skill position talent that ISU has had in a loooooong time. The Cyclones won 5 of their last 7 regular season games in 2023, so this group was clearly putting things together late in the season. Now, their schedule is ROUGH (they draw Utah, K-State, and Kansas, plus some tricky road games  like a visit to West Virginia), so they’re not going to challenge for the title like they did in 2020. But they’re going to take down somebody important.

Most Likely to Be Looking for a New Coach: Colo—just kidding. It’s Baylor. Dave Aranda won the B12 title in 2021 but has posted a losing record in his other three seasons in Waco. There are even some similarities between Aranda’s situation and Narduzzi’s profile at Pitt. Both are defensive gurus whose defenses now stink. Aranda is taking over defense playcalling for himself this year (a sure sign of desperation) and, like Narduzzi, is even bringing in a new OC to run a more wide-open offense. He clearly understands how urgently he needs to turn this around. Baylor has a lot of money, and they’re not going to keep throwing it away on the more of the same product they’ve gotten for 3 of the past 4 seasons.

I don't gamble, but even if I was an absolute degenerate gambling addict, I wouldn't touch any Big 12 champion odds or the o/u win totals for a single team in the whole league.

[Chaos]

I do think the Big 12 is about as wide open as any conference this year, which should make it maybe the most fun one to watch, but I've kind of fallen into the lazy narrative that it's Utah's to lose. Also, we all know the defects from watching him be an HC for the last 12 years, but if there was ever a year for Gus to make another surprise run, it's this year. Him trying to turn KJ Jefferson into Cam Newton will be something to behold, which the underrated thing about the Cam Newton year was he was OC and had a filter.  Plus, Cam is a top 10 college football player of all time. 

Edited August 29 by Chaos

[EVA]

Look, you would’ve lost a lot of money betting against Utah the last two seasons. I would absolutely not bet against them here. Two things give me pause, though:

1) Culture shock. As Utah and Harbaugh/early-Shaw Era Stanford showed, you could have a lot of success playing bully ball in the Pac-12. But this isn’t the Big 12 of 10 years ago. Lots of these teams are comfortable in a rock fight, and I do wonder how Utah will hold up over the course of a Big 12 season.

2) I have big questions about what we’re gonna see from Cam Rising and Brant Kuithe after they both missed 2023. Don’t think it’s a given that they come back playing at a 2022 level.

 

Also: the nature of these abbreviated previews is that I don’t talk about every interesting team, but I agree—KJ Jefferson playing for Gus is very interesting! Probably the best QB fit that Gus has had since…Nick Marshall?

[Brian Fowler]

Here's a fun plotline as well. Oregon, amongst the expected national title contenders and even the dark horse candidates, is more or less unique in that they've never won a national title before in school history. 

Give or take how seriously you consider Central Florida's claim from 2017 (it's not a real strong claim, though there are certainly worse ones out there) no school has won their first national title since Florida in 1996. Florida breaking through didn't seem monumental at the time, after all, just three years earlier Florida State had won their first ever. The first half of the 1980's saw five straight first time champions (Georgia, Clemson, Penn State, Miami and BYU.) Washington had won their first* in 1991. New blood was at the very least matching the oldest and bluesy blooded programs at the very top. 

 

Then it just stopped and it's been nearly thirty years since the club opened up and admitted a new member, while the old guard has seen some of it's biggest and oldest names stack titles (Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio State, especially Alabama, etc.) and a lot of the relatively new members of the club added more (Florida, Florida State, Clemson, Georgia.)

I can't say I'm rooting for Oregon, given that just joined the Big Ten and we all know where my loyalties lies, but it would be cool to see it happen again. 

*Sorta. Washington had never claimed a Natty before 1991, but they did retroactively claim 1960 in 2017, one of four or five different schools that claim that year, all with at least decent arguments.

[EVA]

Of course, I say that about KJ, and he opened the first quarter 1-for-6 against New Hampshire. 
 

Lots of football to be played!

[hammerva]

Well Colorado defense is still complete ass.  especially against the pass

Lucky for them, North Dakota State pass D is much much worse

Edited August 30 by hammerva

[EVA]

Rumors that Colorado’s defense had improved appear to have been (predictably) exaggerated.

Heading to like 56-52 final score.

We are so back.

Edited August 30 by EVA

[EVA]

Desperation 4th down try inside your own 35 against an FCS team. Always a great omen.

[hammerva]

One of the funnier INT as the only reason it happen was because Sanders threw off the foot of a fallen player and bounced really high 

Meanwhile in the ACC, NC State is losing to Western Carolina.  as of the ACC needed more craziness