Before we get going today, a big thank you to everyone who welcomed us back. Some of you’ve said really nice things these last few days. I hope we’ve conveyed our gratitude.
A few asked if we’ll do a full-on college football season preview. The answer isn’t really yes, but it’s closer to yes than no. Today, we’re going to close the door on Week Zero, then go through the top teams in the country and list what each one should be wary about. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the Heisman picture, finalizing our preliminary Arch Manning take in order to comply with the Blogging Standards Act of 2004. Tuesday, we should have the CFP bracketology ready to go. I’d put the probability at around 85 or 95 percent that we get the model ready enough by then. Wednesday, we want to run FCS bracketology, but the probability we reach that finish line is closer to 20 or 30 percent since it’s been so long since we last modeled FCS selection data. Thursday, we plan to preview the Venn diagram of Week 1’s biggest games and biggest fun.
So. A lot of preview-y stuff, but no post with “college football preview” in the title. That’s the plan, and it’s very subject to change.
Week Zero: Iowa State Is the Big 12 Favorite (For Now). Kansas State Is Not.
The high-level rundown of yesterday’s games? Iowa State grabbed a good win and is probably a little better than expected. Kansas State took a tough loss, and while they might be fine, something looks off there.
Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but I followed North Dakota State closely in 2018, and I kind of imprinted on Chris Klieman. I want him to succeed at Kansas State. Between how likable K-State is and Klieman’s unheralded roots, there’s a lot of romance to the thought of a Powercat logo being taken seriously in the CFP’s final four. Also (and this is where the dead horse takes hits), people don’t realize how much Klieman elevated an already great North Dakota State program during his time in Fargo. North Dakota State was awesome. Chris Klieman made them even better. They’ve sunk a bit since then (Matt Entz is now 0–1 at Fresno State), but at that program’s peak, the Bison would’ve been competitive against some top-ten FBS teams. Klieman’s won a Big 12 title. I’m still not sure he’s coached a K-State team better than his NDSU best.
Watching K-State’s offense stop and start yesterday, though, needing two Iowa State breakdowns to reach double digits, perplexment at Klieman’s tenure crested. Behind the lines Klieman’s staff has historically built, a guy with Avery Johnson’s tools should be the Big 12 Player of the Year. Instead, he looks out of gear, and so does the machine as a whole. K-State should be a better football team than Iowa State. Instead, they’re not. Some will say they are—they outgained Iowa State per play, timing their turnovers inconveniently—but Iowa State had the upper hand for the entire fourth quarter yesterday, winning the rivalry matchup for the fifth time in six years.
One simple explanation for the struggles, one I’m guessing is getting attention this morning in the Sunflower State, is that Johnson just isn’t that good. It’s always easy to love quarterbacks’ potential, but it’s meaningful that the best pro quarterbacks of the 21st century include a seventh-round draft pick and a guy who had to start college at a juco. For how much football loves its quarterbacks, the sport isn’t that good at projecting what they’ll be. Raw tools are a smaller percentage of the story than they are anywhere else on the field. Maybe the industry missed on Avery Johnson. More likely, though, it’s Kansas State that’s missing. More likely, K-State isn’t developing this guy. What would Aaron Rodgers have become if Aaron Rodgers were drafted by the Bears? Not to call K-State the Bears—that’s way too far—but the point is that even flaws which can be isolated to Johnson might be a product of what’s around him. Consider: A part-time weapon in 2023, Johnson’s on his third play-caller in three years. Each one, objectively, has been a little worse than the last. That’s not a recipe for turning raw tools into a Heisman contender. And to be clear, a Heisman contender is what Avery Johnson should probably be, especially playing in the Big 12. It’s not that he’s bad. It’s that he should be a Collin Klein-level figure in K-State lore.
Part of a college football head coach’s job is the CEO role, something that’s especially true opposite the head coach’s stronger side of the ball. Defensive coaches need to hire good offensive staffs. Offensive coaches need to hire good defensive staffs. Klieman is by roots a defensive coach. Like Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame, he needs his offensive lieutenants to run that half of the business excellently. Conor Riley made this easier the last twelve years, so easy that the Cowboys hired him this offseason to coach his first professional offensive line. Klein made this easier for Klieman’s first few seasons in Manhattan, so easy that Texas A&M hired him to run its offense and coach its quarterbacks. Now, Klieman’s down to Matt Wells, on whom the jury is charitably out. Maybe K-State comes back from this like Freeman’s OC Mike Denbrock did when Riley Leonard lit his college career on fire against NIU. Maybe Avery Johnson plays a lot of smashmouth football next week against North Dakota and the Cats take off from there, a legend rising from the flames reborn. Even that, though, is probably wishful thinking. Avery Johnson wasn’t amazing yesterday, but he was hardly the problem. The whole offense didn’t click.
One issue Klieman faces is how good Bill Snyder was at what he did. Kansas State’s a weird job. It has a large history of success, but before that it has a larger history of being a historically terrible football team. Take away Bill Snyder, and Kansas State is a worse version of pre-Matt Campbell ISU. Klieman, then, has to win in a place where winning isn’t easy. He has to do it in front of a fanbase that’s used to winning a lot. I envy aspects of his job—the proximity to Varsity Donuts, the option to walk those treelined streets in the fall—but I don’t envy the disparity between what should be expected and what Bill Snyder made Kansas State fans know as normal.
As for the Cyclones (warning and promise: gratuitous Iowa State fanhood ahead), did you know Matt Campbell’s Iowa State’s best coach ever by a few lightyears? I did know this, and I do know this, and I always forget it until I watch a broadcast present Iowa State to neutral viewers. It’s kind of crazy that he isn’t treated like more of a god in Ames. Not that he’s treated poorly or anything, but Campbell is about a third of the way to being Iowa State’s Bill Snyder. The fanbase treats him more like Tim Floyd. That’s not entirely unfair, but it’s interesting. He keeps getting mentioned for and sometimes interviewing for other jobs. I don’t know if that’s a chicken or an egg.
We’ll get to Arizona State later, but as we said above, yesterday’s win makes Iowa State the Big 12 favorite. This isn’t to say they’re the best team in the Big 12 (we’ll get to Arizona State, who still deserves our vote), but it’s a tight pack and they’ve got a win over another contender. That’s enough to put them in the forecasting lead. As an Iowa State fan, I’m terrified of South Dakota coming to Ames next week (the Coyotes broke through last season and could be the second-best FCS team this fall), but yesterday was a joyful occasion. With a few exceptions (almost all of which came when K-State got to him in the backfield), Rocco Becht was a butcher, more than making up for the fumble and a couple bad sacks with tough running and timely passing and all the moxie you’d expect from a guy named Rocco Becht. Iowa State’s receivers will be fine, playing most of their games with drier footballs and better footing. Iowa State’s secondary will be fine, getting to know each other better and ironing out wrinkles as the year goes on. Both touchdown catches were nice, and the defensive backs more than made up for the two blown coverages with key takedowns on short-yardage stuffs. Matt Campbell could use a game management guru, but that’s not new. The most concerning aspect of the performance came on the offensive line, and 1) that unit was down a starter who I think should be back next week and 2) that unit ended up bullying Kansas State for a lot of the fourth quarter. Sometimes, you’re getting manhandled. Sometimes, you’re chiseling away at a wall that’s about to give. It’s sometimes hard as a layman to tell the difference.
More Week Zero thoughts, starting in the Big 12 and slowly seeping across the rest of the country:
- I knew Jalon Daniels was still in college and it nonetheless befuddles me that Jalon Daniels is still in college. Good for him and KU, but man. That guy seems older than he is. And he’s old!
- I didn’t put together how funny the no–faking–injuries rule’s enforcement was going to be in practice. We got a Zapruder film to determine whether Cael Brezina went down before or after the ball was spotted. We’re going to get those every Saturday. I can’t wait.
- That K-State fake reverse out of the Wildcat is going to show up again this year. They were getting that thing on tape, like when Washington used their own semi-trick play package in every big game in 2023. (Or at least the ones that were close.)
- This is probably publicly available information and I should just go look, but is Stanford filming a docuseries about Andrew Luck? It seems like they should, if for no other reason than to save future sitcom-makers the work. The best player in a big program’s history (sorry Elway) retires early because of concussions then pops up a few years later to try to save his alma mater’s football team, all while dealing with complete and total apathy from the student body? Some version of that’s already available on twelve different streaming services. Anyway, tough loss, but very fun for Hawaii.
- I feel bad for UC Davis players who flew to Montgomery, had the game won, let Mercer back into it, then had to wait a few hours only for a stalled storm to make the game a no-contest. In the FCS, missing a ranked win like that can do a number on your path within the playoff, and it’s possible UC Davis is going to end up around the cut line for who does and doesn’t get a bye. Thankfully for them, they looked good. But man, is Mercer hard to kill.
- Congratulations to Western Kentucky, the favorite in Conference USA in the same way Iowa State’s technically the favorite in the Big 12. Big Red, we see you.
The Biggest Risk for Every Title Hopeful
Turning our attention back to the big picture.
We’re drawing an unnecessarily large circle around “title hopeful” by including eleven teams in the list to come. There are not eleven title hopefuls. There are probably eight—the top seven below plus Clemson. But Movelor has Arizona State ranked eleventh, and it seems reasonable to talk about ASU on a weekend where the Big 12’s been the centerpiece.
As we’ve said already, don’t put too much stock in the order of Movelor’s preliminary rankings. They’re pretty clumsy for the first few weeks of the year. We’re using them here because they’re a convenient way to order these teams. What we really want to do, though, is poke holes in some hype balloons that have gotten a little bloated over seven football-less months. No team enters this season on as good of footing as Alabama and Georgia and Clemson all did at their recent peaks.
#1 Ohio State: What if one of the new assistants sucks?
Ohio State has loads of talent and a mostly proven head coach. (I mean, the guy can’t beat Michigan. He’s a national champion, but that’s a pretty big deal.) The Buckeyes will be good enough that in my opinion, they’re the national championship favorite. But Jim Knowles was a program-changer in Columbus, and he’s not in Columbus anymore. Will Matt Patricia keep the defense firing? How will the new offensive setup work, with Chip Kelly back to the NFL?
The Patricia piece is a bigger concern than the offense, though there are chances the offense has problems. The offense went through big transitions last offseason and turned out fine. We’re more worried about Ohio State’s defense again. To take a look at the Buckeyes, please reapply your pre-Knowles lens.
#2 Penn State: What if everything doesn’t work out perfectly?
When we said some hype balloons had gotten too full, Penn State’s was really the one on our mind. These guys were good last year, but their good wins came against Illinois, SMU, and Boise State. That’s one of the better collections nationally, but it doesn’t pop off the page.
If James Franklin were new, we’d look at three single-digit losses to maybe the three best teams in the country and say the program was close. But James Franklin isn’t new, and close losses to the best isn’t new for James Franklin. Knowles might be the best DC in the game, but this is only year one, and Penn State has less room to grow defensively than Ohio State did. Andy Kotelnicki helped Drew Allar right the ship after a bad freshman year, but that offense still wasn’t exactly scary. Account for the losses of Abdul Carter and Tyler Warren, and the supposed talent upgrade across the board looks more like a wash.
The reason AP voters are high on Penn State is that Ohio State had a lot of turnover and both Georgia and Alabama got lost last year at sea. It looks better to follow the pack and be wrong together than stick your neck out for someone and be wrong alone, especially if the someone you’d stick your neck out for is someone boring like the Bucks or Bulldogs or Crimson Tide. It’s easy to get behind Penn State. It’s convenient. That doesn’t mean they’re actually the best team in the Big Ten.
#3 Notre Dame: What if they can’t win solely through the power of believing in themselves?
Last year’s Notre Dame team was miraculous in a lot of senses, but one of the biggest is that I don’t think people found them annoying? Here was Notre Dame, the Yankees of college football, led by a simple chubby-cheeked quarterback who loved to praise the Lord. Usually, that would annoy people. There’s no greater testament to Marcus Freeman’s charisma than how not annoying it all was.
Notre Dame has a favorable schedule again this year and is finally returning to life with five-star talent. They’re a year away (at least) from what we think of as national championship caliber, but college football is lacking a dynasty right now, or so we think. Still, the Irish are probably better built for 2026, and there’s a dangerous scenario where the lose–to–someone–terrible bug bites yet again and they don’t recover so terrifically this time. There’s another where Miami outduels them on opening night and Mike Elko bloodies them up when they get back to South Bend. There’s another where they go 12–0 and make the playoff but draw someone like 10–3 Texas in the quarterfinals with a full head of steam. It sounds corny, but Notre Dame won all those games last year by being the better team. It’s hard to sustain something that wholesome in college football.
#4 Oregon: What if they have to play a big game and/or Dante Moore doesn’t rock?
I know some have already started having the “big game” question about Dan Lanning, but it’s a fair question. Maybe he can learn it (plenty have) but maybe he can’t (Brian Kelly and James Franklin still haven’t). To add something a little more original: There’s a lot of confidence in Dante Moore, and we haven’t seen the source. Again: Groupthink is really easy on this college football internet.
#5 Texas: What if Steve Sarkisian was right about Arch Manning?
Arch Manning should be really good. Eventually. Last year, he was so unprepared that Steve Sarkisian refused to go to him in any significant way the second half of the year. Quinn Ewers battled multiple noteworthy injuries, Texas’s offense got stuck in the mud, and Arch Manning stayed put on the sideline. When we did see him, half the time he was physically overwhelming defenders and half the time he was throwing rockets off their chests. The guy is a Manning, but he’s not what you think of as a Manning. He’s somewhere between Avery Johnson and a larger, faster Brett Favre.
Now, Sark’s a smart guy and a good coach and he knows quarterbacking. Arch Manning should get there, and he might be there already, and Quinn Ewers might show up in the NFL the first time Tua Tagovailoa gets concussed and remind us how well he knows how to play that position, explaining away Sark’s seeming Manning distrust. But Texas has to play in Columbus, Gainesville, and Athens this fall in the regular season alone. Either a lot of defenses are going to turn out worse than we expect, or Arch Manning is going to be tested.
One more Texas thought, since they’re a common #1: They sent a lot of talent to the NFL this spring. It’s possible to do that and keep being good, but it’s hard to do that and get better. They need to get better. Last year’s Texas wasn’t good enough.
#6 Alabama: What if Kalen DeBoer continues on his current course?
You know how some years, a screw gets loose at LSU and the team starts shooting shit out of every orifice, a desecration that necessitates a full-program reset? That can happen at Alabama, and that’s the direction these guys are headed. Kalen DeBoer inherited the smoothest machine in the country. He started 4–0 with that machine. He lost to Vanderbilt, almost lost to South Carolina, lost to Tennessee, only scored a field goal against a bad Oklahoma, then got upset in a bowl game by an empty husk of wheat that called itself Michigan. Do you know how loud the noise is going to be around Tuscaloosa when the first little thing goes wrong?
#7 Georgia: What if the edge can’t be found again?
Something from Georgia’s demise last year that might not have gotten enough attention: Kirby Smart’s dad had a really bad fall right before the terrorist attack which delayed the Sugar Bowl. He was hospitalized and needed surgery, surgery that turned tragic two days after the game.
Not to make death about football—RIP Sonny Smart—but that’s a big distraction for a head coach, especially when it’s combined with a terrorist attack. There’s a universe where Sonny Smart is perfectly healthy and the Sugar Bowl’s played as scheduled on New Year’s Day. I’m curious what happens in that game, and what then happens if Georgia meets Ohio State in the national championship.
Still, Georgia looked every bit the part of a program last year that had lost its edge. It looked that way in its 2023 loss too, against Alabama. It’s hard to sustain pure, ruthless dominance. Often, someone catches up to you. Sometimes, you just can’t keep the program’s focus the same. Georgia might be on the downhill now. Nick Saban might be the greatest college football coach since Knute Rockne, and even he couldn’t stay on top forever.
#8 Mississippi: What if everyone is right?
Movelor loves Mississippi relative to the consensus, and that’s because Lane Kiffin liked to win big last year and lose close. I’m curious about this team. The schedule isn’t obscene, and they really made strides last season. But the preseason AP Poll has independent predictive power, and while Movelor gives it some credit, maybe in this case it isn’t giving it enough.
#9 Clemson: What if “better” doesn’t mean “great”?
Besides Penn State, the biggest overinflated balloon out there is probably Cade Klubnik’s. He was better last year. He wasn’t great.
The risk for Clemson is that the same thing happens with the whole team. There are plenty of reasons to be bullish on the Tigers, ranging from how much production they bring back to how few opponents on their schedule should prove competitive. Clemson should be better. But Clemson could go 13–0 to start the year and walk into the quarterfinals as an underdog. They’ve got a long hill to climb. I agree that they’re making progress, and that’s impressive and Dabo Swinney deserves credit for it if it continues in its apparent direction. But it’s a long hill.
#10 LSU: What if the perfect storm finally rains?
The thing about LSU and its coaches is that when they go, they go loudly. Remember all the weird stuff reported around the time they got rid of Ed Orgeron? Prepare yourself for a Brian Kelly day in December. If what we’ve heard is true, it’s going to be weirder than you expect.
That said, it’s possible things click for Kelly, especially if the Tigers can get to October with their heads attached. Go 2–1 against Clemson, Florida, and Mississippi, and suddenly the path doesn’t look outrageous. The better question for LSU is what happens if things go right. They can! Probably won’t—even at LSU, it’s hard for Kelly to land the talent necessary to win national titles—but might.
#11 Arizona State: What if the creatine wears off?
Like Notre Dame, ASU won a lot of hearts and minds last winter. Understandably so. But while we hope Kenny Dillingham can keep making good, there was some magic in that football team. We’re not as worried about the practical impact of losing Cam Skattebo as we are about the team losing that bowling ball mentality. Sam Leavitt was a good quarterback last year in some odd ways, like that he was pretty good at knowing the right amount to scramble. He’s going to be better-scouted this year. The whole team will be.
It’s hard to go one hundred miles an hour for two years in a row.
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There are plenty more interesting teams further down the list, but we aren’t doing conference-by-conference previews, and without that, I’m sorry but we just cannot make the time required to adequately dissect Texas State and UCLA. We’ll try to give attention where we can as the year goes on. We found last year that Thursday and Friday night games helped make that happen, but no promises.
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