College Football is in full flight and after a very interesting first weekend, it looks like we can call week # 2 cupcake weekend. Outside of 4-5 games, the majority of teams are taking this as a bye week by scheduling FCS opponents or small schools. This has given us a lot of high spreads and it is definitely a tough weekend to handicap.

Let’s recap last week. We opened with discussing Washington’s offensive line and I think it is safe to say that Washington showed us what they can do when protecting Keith Price as the Huskies lit up Boise St. Also impressive was Washington’s defense, who held Boise St in check. However preseason reports was that Boise St’s Defense was shutting down their offense all offseason and Washington’s offense torched Boise St’s D in the first game, so take it with a grain of salt.

One of the problems is that Washington won so convincingly that value might be totally gone now on the Huskies. You tend to see an adjustment on teams like the Huskies after that type of showing, so looking for fade opportunities might be the way to go.

We won quite easily with the Cuse/Penn St Under. Defenses were definitely ahead of the offenses in that game and having Penn St WR Robinson sit out the first half helped. We lost with the Illinois game and I was upset to see Illinois D give up that many points. The offense scored the amount of points I expected and the Illini were up comfortably at half but a poor 2nd half showing led to a loss ATS.

Some other findings that I will look more into this season:

– Very impressed with Clemson defense, even though they gave up a lot of big plays and points to Georgia, they played tough. Georgia is going to put up a lot of points on everyone and their O-line is one of the best in the country. Clemson brought an attacking defense that should give most teams in their conference problems.

-I was impressed with Zach Mettenberger. He played really well vs TCU. He looks much improved and has the receiving corps to be really good this year. LSU could sneak up on Bama/A&M and take the West.

– Bowling Green’s win over Tulsa was very impressive, especially the way they shut down Tulsa’s offense, did not see that coming. Is this BG team legit or is Tulsa’s offense down this year? Something to look at.

– USC offense looked terrible at times vs Hawaii. In the past when USC has struggled on offense, you still see glimpses of their potential. This time the USC passing game was bad. They don’t know how to utilize Marquise Lee properly and without Woods on the other side, teams can shut him down completely. There were times when the USC QB’s literally had only 3 seconds to get rid of the ball or they were getting hit. Not a good sign when it’s against Hawaii and you have to play the likes of Stanford, AzSt and UCLA. USC did have some success in the run game and I was impressed with the runs of RB Jones. I actually think there is not much of a difference when they get RB Redd back.

– SMU’s defense is horrible. I was impressed with Texas Tech’s QB but SMU defense looked like they didn’t want to play. Not a good sign, especially at home vs one of the bigger schools they play. They are going to be involved in a lot of shootouts.

– Rice is going to give some teams problems this year and could be a trendy dog. Their offense can move the ball and I actually want to see what the line is vs Kansas next week at home.

– The situation at Iowa is gonna get worse and they are going to have a bad season until Ferentz loses his job. They are going to be in a rebuild mode until the new HC comes in and gets his guys.

– UCLA’s offense is gonna be really good as forecasted and if their D holds up, they could be Pac 12 champs at the end of it all.

– I liked some things that I saw from Cal and they could be a nice home dog in some spots. Cal had the lead late in that 3rd quarter but gave up 2 INT’s for TD. Cal’s defense played good at times and played horrible at other times, so I am not sure what is there. QB Jared Goff showed flashes of being good as the season progresses, just needs to limit the mistakes.

– Everyone is basically anointing QB Jameis Winston and he looked like the real deal. Florida St could be sneaky good with their O-line being one of the best and their skill players surrounding Winston.

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Picks to Consider

Notre Dame +4

The last battle in a while for ND/Mich and the 2nd night game ever at the Big House. I was fortunate enough to be at the first one and it was one of the best games I’ve ever seen from an entertainment purpose. There is a lot of hype for this game to live up to the expectations of the last night game in Michigan, but in that game ND was the better team for 45 minutes and Michigan magically fought back. That was the year ND had a boatload of turnovers the first 2 games of the year and still were 40 secs from winning it.

Now to this year. It seems like there is alot of hype surrounding Michigan with them being 4 point favourites here. They impressed from a score standpoint vs Central Michigan but this Central Michigan team is nothing close to anything they have put out in the past couple of years. ND played a sneaky Temple team and the score was alot closer than people expect.

Alot of people still have the sour taste of the BCS championship game in their mouth and say Notre Dame is overrated. If you indeed look back to last season, they had some lucky wins but they played a very difficult schedule and if you capped that game well, you knew Alabama was a matchup nightmare for the Irish. Alabama could negate ND’s advantage up front with the best college offensive line we’ve seen in a while.

Also, add to the fact the news about their starting QB Everett Golson and people are looking to fade ND this year. This very well could be the case but I think there is some value here getting over a FG with ND.

I think the key is that Michigan’s weaknesses this year weren’t tested vs CM. Their interior offensive line is going up vs the best inside defense they will see this year. I really think this will give the Michigan run game problems and ND returns alot from their secondary which could make life for QB Devin Gardner hard.

On the other side, Michigan is replacing alot of guys from their interior and they will be tested tonight as well from ND’s offense. I actually like QB Tommy Rees for ND. He has shown that he is a capable QB that can win you games. If he can keep his mistakes limited, this offense should be able to score on Michigan’s D.

Let;s add that the weather is not that great in Ann Arbor. The forecast calls for rain sometime throughout the day and that will give an advantage to the run game and whomever gets the best line play and I lean ND with the better lines on both sides.

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BYU/Texas U56

This is a game that could go a many different ways from picking sides however I think the value here lies on the under. I think this BYU will have alot of trouble scoring tonight. I am not a big fan of their offense and I think Texas will be able  to take away any sort of run game that BYU will try to establish.

I think the home crowd will get the BYU defense pumped up and show an effect there. Texas struggled out of the game early in Week #1 and I think the BYU defense will be able to hold the Longhorns down to start the game.

I also can see BYU running clock to keep Texas offense off the field and make this a grind it out type game.

I see a slow start by both offfenses and you get a final of around 24-20.

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