Time to pick ourselves up and continue with the season. There’s still a lot of football left to watch and hopefully some happy moments for Irish football. At least, there will be entertaining games across the country to chew on each week. This doesn’t look like a super great week as the loaded opening slate means lots of rest (and even a couple byes for our upcoming opponents) for many teams.
Enemy Watch
FRIDAY
#13 Louisville (-14.5) at Syracuse
A big conference clash for new Cuse head coach Dino Babers as they are heavy underdogs to the Cardinals. This is also Part II of the Lamar Jackson Hype Train following 17 completions, 11 runs, 405 yards, and 8 touchdowns in one half of football in the opener. Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey was no chump last week either with 34 completions on 40 attempts for 355 yards and 2 scores. Plenty of offensive firework potential here.
SATURDAY
NC State (-4.5) at East Carolina
Rice (+9.5) at Army
Utah State (+16.5) at USC
UConn (+4.5) at Navy
Wake Forest (+6.5) at Duke
Florida Atlantic (+23.5) at #25 Miami
UTEP (+28) at #11 Texas
Virginia Tech (+10.5) at #17 Tennessee
Another underwhelming collection of games for our opponents although it’s free of FCS programs this time around. There’s a little bit of intrigue for NC State as they’ve lost the last 2 against ECU and it’s expected the Pirates aren’t going to be the same type of program they’ve been in recent years. Hence, the Pack being road favorites.
Army is riding high after their upset versus Temple and giving a bunch of points to a Rice team that just got its socks knocked off against Western Kentucky. What about USC bouncing back from their embarrassment? It feels like Utah State is past the period where they were legit good with Chuckie Keeton and Gary Andersen so you have to like the Trojans overwhelming them in due time.
Diaco is getting straight disrespected! Maybe nearly losing to Maine wasn’t the best course of action, though? Navy did lose quarterback Tago Smith to a torn ACL in the opener so the door is open for UConn to slow down the Middies. Last week, senior QB Will Worth wasn’t asked to do much (9 carries, 22 yards) but Navy still rolled over Fordham.
The field looks bigger in person. I think. pic.twitter.com/VdataJqbTW
— @GrantRamey (@GrantRamey) September 6, 2016
We’re ready to see the college football attendance record fall this Saturday night as NASCAR inserts itself into the record books. It’s kind of an interesting game as the Vols really need to bounce back from a forgettable performance in their opener while Va Tech and Jerod Evans (267 yards, 4 TD) looked pretty solid in week one. You wonder if the spectacle will add or take away from a possible entertaining game.
Raised Eyebrow Game
Tulsa (+28.5) at #4 Ohio State
Classic look-ahead game for the Buckeyes as they will travel to Oklahoma next weekend. Urban Meyer shows no inclination for even entertaining a loss in these types of games, however, Tulsa is perpetually good on offense and could cause some problems.
Double Eyebrow Game
Jacksonville State (OFF) at #21 LSU
From our pre-season “Sneaky Good Games” series this one just got even more important with LSU losing at Lambeau Field in their opener. The Tigers offense looked really pedestrian (and Fournette did too, plus he’s banged up already) and it’s not a good time to be playing a potent FCS offense who might not need more than 25 points to win.
National Spotlight Games
Penn State (+5.5) at Pittsburgh
Western Kentucky (+28) at #1 Alabama
South Carolina (+6.5) at Mississippi State
Arkansas (+7.5) at #15 TCU
Iowa State (+15.5) at #16 Iowa
BYU (+3.5) at Utah
Texas Tech (+3.5) at Arizona State
Washington State (+11.5) at Boise State
Zero games against ranked teams. Factor in last week’s result for the Irish and the lowly opponent coming up and this is bound to be a weekend where a lot of folks check out. Go ahead, re-charge your batteries.
The newly named “Keystone Classic” is mildly interesting especially for those of you from the Pennsylvania area. Alabama also has a tough comeback game following their fun trip to Dallas. If you remember, both of these games made my “Sneaky Good” list.
Arkansas was flying under the radar last week and nearly lost to Louisiana Tech. Neither did TCU play all that well in a shootout with South Dakota State. This is potentially a really good non-league win on the line for one of these teams.
Iowa State is breaking in new head coach Matt Campbell and just lost to Northern Iowa. Next up, the big in-state rivalry which might be overshadowed by the fact that Kirk Ferentz just signed an extension for 10 years and a bump in pay to $4.5 million per season.
Wazzu on the blue turf was supposed to be one of the crazy fun early games of the season. The Cougars were a dark horse favorite in the Pac-12 North, or at least to shake things up in a big way, but went and lost to FCS Eastern Washington. Probably still a fun game, though.
What a crap week of games. I don’t know if last week was the OMG BESTEST WEEKND OF CFB EVAHR that ESPN wanted us to believe, but this weekend is really boring. And I finally got cable in the new apartment, too. Sigh.
I’m interested to see how VT looks against Tennessee. The new VT offense looked pretty bad for long stretches against Liberty – Evans was missing throws and Liberty was blowing up run plays. But Evans connected on two TDs right before halftime and it looks like they pulled away in the second half. We’ll see if they just had to work out some kinks in the first game or if the offense will struggle against better competition.