Happy Football Christmas Guys! I will be joining the guys at Saturday Edge for this upcoming college football season. I hope to bring some added insight and (hopefully) some good plays that help us all bring in money. I will be playing around with my weekly column at the start to get a better feel of what the reader needs. If you have any comments, I will read them all and look to further help you guys out. My twitter handle is @jimmysingh9

The first couple of weeks of the season are usually very profitable as books are adjusting just like we are to the new incoming talent and kids taking over starting positions. If you put in the research and time, you can find an edge that the books may not. However, a lot of cappers get stuck in the same situation where they bet teams with a lot of unknowns going into the season. I try to stay away from those teams and actually just focus on watching the key areas of change. Just because you do not have a bet on a team doesn’t mean you cannot watch them to get a good read to setup a future play. The majority of my wagers come from seeing something from games that I did not bet. An example from last year was Arkansas/Rutgers, I thought it was a great bounce back spot for Arkansas and it helped me realize how bad they really were and that Rutgers was a lot better than rated. It allowed me to setup a big bet on Texas A&M over Arkansas the next week. A&M went on to win by 48.

Let’s use the Washington Huskies first. This is a team chalk full of talent. They return almost everyone from a skill position on offense. This very well could be a potent offense and a team that could be a trendy home dog at times in their rebuilt stadium. The key to this team’s offense however is their offensive line play. 2 years ago, QB Keith Price had a career sophomore season, throwing for 3100 yds at a 67% completion rate and a 33 TD to 11 Int ratio. Keith Price went into last year on the up and up and was a trendy player to have a huge year. However last season, Keith Price regressed, throwing for 2700 yds with a 6% drop in completions and a 19 TD to 13 Int ratio. A lot of people would assume that Keith Price either didn’t have the weapons necessary to succeed or that he just had a bad year.

Washington QB Keith Price (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

If you watched a bunch of the Huskies games from last year, you would know that Washington was beset by O-line injuries. Their starting RG and LG were out for the year after 2 games. Keith Price was sacked 39 times last year and in a handful of games, he was running for his life right after the snap. In their win vs Stanford last year, Keith Price could not drop back and stay in the pocket and Stanford had a guy in the backfield by the time Price was set. This results in jittery feet and forced decisions and was a huge reason of Keith Price regressing last year.

This year they return 4 starters along the OL from last year and get their two guards back from injury. Now will we see the 2011 Keith Price if he gets protected or is this offensive line not going to improve and we are going to see something similar to 2012?

I think we will get the answer quite early as a solid Boise St team comes in. I feel this is the perfect game to sit back and watch the Huskies O-line and get a good feeling of how they will protect Price for the year. Boise St has an average to above average D-line and they will be sound enough to get a good read on how Washington will play. I think if the Washington offense plays well and loses, we may be able to find the best value in the Huskies moving forward as people will see the loss and think not good but losing to Boise St is not a bad loss and if the O-line is solid than we can expect the Huskies to be better moving forward.

Picks to consider 

Penn St/Syracuse U51.5

This is a game with many unknowns at key positions. Both teams come in replacing QB’s and neither has stated which QB will start, which usually means they haven’t found a quality starter ( i.e USC last night with Wittek and Kessler both stinking). Both teams come in with a veteran backfield and will look to their run game to establish their offense until their QB’s get into the games.

Penn St will definitely look to load up the box. It has been talked about in the Syracuse camp that they really have no deep vertical threats this year and it will not take Penn St from loading up and trying to stop the run. Bill O’Brien also usually runs a very conservative offense and while the best player on the field is WR Allen Robinson, it will take time for his young QB’s to get accustomed to the game and I could see a slow start for Robinson. Also both teams have some decent players returning in their front 7 and it shouldn’t be easy for either team to score.

Syracuse also could be looking to install the Pistol offense as their OC spent quite a bit of time in SF watching Kaepernick and the Niners. This could also lead to the belief that he feels his passing game could be lacking and you may see a lot of running and a lot of chewing up of the clock.  The weather for NY/NJ calls for a bit of rain in the day, so the conditions could favor the under if anything here.

I just don’t see 6 TD’s and 3 field goals happening in this game and the under seems like a safe bet.

Illinois -17 over Southern Illinois

This is one of those games where the FCS opponent really doesn’t have much to offer in resistance here and Illinois should win this game by 3 TD’s. The average margin of victory in this matchup has been 24pts and the closest margin of score was in 1985. Gives you a little history that this isn’t like one of those Col St/Col matchups where the smaller school gets up for the big brother and plays them tight. I feel having this game early as well and being the first game of the year with allow the Illini fans to be into it early, anticipating any type of football.

Southern Illinois was a middle of the pack MVC team and do return their QB and get some FBS caliber RB transfers from Georgia, Iowa and Oregon St. however they should be overwhelmed at the line of scrimmage and the RB’s shouldn’t be able to get any big runs here. SIU also replaces 3 starters on it’s D-line. A bad sign which will allow QB Nathan Scheelhaase a lot of time to run the offense and we have seen glimpses of what Scheelhaase can do. He can be a dangerous QB and put up some big #’s as he showed 2 years ago. He had a fairly easy time vs So Illinois 2 years ago.

I really see this being an easy game for the Illini, they had a poor showing last season and they will want to get out of the gate and gain some confidence. I really don’t see S.Illinois slowing them down with them losing 7 starters on defense. I see Illinois putting up 30+ here and envision a score of 38-17.