College football lookahead is the essential grab bag of numbers, trends, reads and concepts each Monday throughout the season.
In Week 2, we'll check out the next test for Justin Fields and Ohio State, tell you why the worst offense in the country the past few years is finally breaking out and identify a hyped Big Ten team with major issues on the line of scrimmage that you need to start fading now.
All odds courtesy of Caesars Sportsbook unless otherwise listed. Openers
First impressions from the schedule and opening lines. Lines listed from Circa Sports.
7:30 p.m. ET, Saturday (ABC) LSU-Texas is the marquee Week 2 game, and Tom Herman brings a 13-2-1 ATS record as an underdog (with 10 outright wins) into the matchup. Will Texas' banged-up running back corps be able to give the Horns anything or will Sam Ehlinger have to rush and pass a combined 70 times? Are the quarterbacks on both sides too good to keep this game under the 51.5 total?
The only other matchup pitting ranked teams has Texas A&M traveling to Clemson. Last year's Week 2 tilt in College Station saw the eventual national champs escape with a 28-26 win as 13-point favorites. This will be A&M's first extended look at Trevor Lawrence, as Kelly Bryant was the Clemson quarterback then. Lawrence's counterpart, however, is well known to the opposing defense. Aggies signal-caller Kellen Mond torched Clemson for 430 yards on 10.8 yards per attempt last year. Dabo Swinney is 5-4 SU and 5-4 ATS versus former ACC Atlantic rival Jimbo Fisher. Underdogs are 6-3 in their meetings.
Noon ET, Saturday (ABC) Third-year Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell returns to Columbus, where he played under John Cooper, coached under both Cooper and Jim Tressel, and served as interim head coach for a season between Tressel and Urban Meyer. It's a rare opportunity for the Bearcats, who have gotten only five chances at their in-state big brother since 1931. Ohio State was favored by an average of 22.3 points in those games and won them (all) by an average of 18.2 points, though the Buckeyes did log the cover in three of the five.
Noon ET, Saturday (CBSSN) Incredibly, UAB is a road favorite for already the sixth time since restarting the program in 2017. The Blazers are 2-3 ATS so far, suffering all three of the losses outright as well.
8 p.m. ET, Friday (CBSSN) This is only the fourth turn in the road chalk role for sixth-year Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson, who failed to cover the previous three. The Deacs are a double-digit road favorite for the first time since the 2008 opener at Baylor.
The best bet on the board is clearly Mack Brown DWTS futures. Portfolio checkup
Which teams we're buying and selling, and why.
Buy
Cincinnati Bearcats (1-0)
Last week:Won vs. UCLA, 24-21 Up next: at Ohio State Memphis, Temple and UCF were better, but Cincinnati broke through as an AAC power last year with an 11-2 record in Fickell's second season. This year, the Bearcats returned the back seven on defense, 11 of the top 12 offensive skill players and both specialists, but both lines of scrimmage had to be rebuilt. Cincy benefited from some unforced errors by UCLA and a big gift from the officials, but they answered the questions about line play in an impressive and physically dominating performance against the Bruins that left no doubt that Fickell's Cats are among the current power programs in the Group of 5.
Last week:Won at BYU, 30-12 Up next: vs. Northern Illinois Just like Michigan State, Utah has a returning starter at quarterback and a generally veteran offense but is installing a new scheme. Like Michigan State's, Utah's first game in the new offense looked like, well, a first game in a new offense. And also like the Spartans, the Utes showed why the defense is dominant enough to carry its team to national relevance while the offense takes some time to figure things out.
Last week:Won vs. UMass, 48-21 Up next: at Iowa This is the first year since 2010 that the same coach has coordinated the Rutgers offense for consecutive seasons, and the long-overdue continuity showed as Rutgers outscored UMass 41-0 over the last three quarters. Raheem Blackshear and Isaih Pacheco were bright spots last year, but with Blackshear's big-play versatility and Pacheco's angry downhill running, they have grown into one of the top tailback tandems in the country. Former four-star Bo Melton was already the team's go-to guy, but he appears poised to break out with more explosive plays than last year's paltry 8.8 yards per catch suggests. And after one start, Texas Tech transfer McLane Carter looks as if he'll give this team a lot more at the quarterback position than it got from the combo of Art Sitkowski and Gio Rescigno in 2018.
Rutgers played some decent defense down the stretch last year, but the offense has been awful in all three seasons under Chris Ash. It has yet to average as much as 18 points, or 285 total yards, or 150 rushing yards or even 140 passing yards in Ash's tenure, but the 2019 offense will easily surpass those numbers. Rutgers has now covered six straight games, but there's more meat on the bone, especially with this offense. The statistical histories that influence projections (and therefore point spreads and markets) are working with three years of offensive futility that the 2019 unit has left behind.
Last week:Won vs. SDSU, 28-21 Up next: at Fresno State A close call with South Dakota State revealed serious deficiencies on both lines of scrimmage. P.J. Fleck has recruited well and skill-position talent is good on both sides of the ball, but the 2019 squad is not built for success in the Big Ten without major improvement up front as the season progresses.
The (rest of the) SEC East
Georgia is a national championship co-favorite in our book, but the rest of the division is still no threat to the Dogs. In 13 tries since Smart's first season, East foes have managed only three covers versus Georgia, and none kept it closer than a 14-point loss. After Week 1 of 2019, it sure doesn't look as if any team is poised to change that. The other six East teams just went 1-5 versus the opening-week numbers, suffering outright upsets as 26-, 16- and 11-point favorites.
Georgia has as much separation in this division as Clemson does in the ACC. Aside from his own team, only South Carolina in the East has a winning ATS record since Kirby Smart arrived in Athens. Five SEC West teams have winning ATS marks over that span. The East is perceived as closing the gap, but it won't happen with the current group of coaches. Other than Georgia and maybe Missouri, the East teams have all just launched campaigns that we expect ultimately will be less satisfying than 2018. That's going to make for some restless fan bases and busy athletic directors. Tough spots
Think twice before backing teams facing conditions that often portend a lackluster performance.
7:30 p.m. ET, Saturday (Pac-12 Network) Oregon coach Mario Cristobal insists that his team's leadership will ensure a bounce back from the sting of Auburn scoring the game's last three touchdowns and edging his Ducks at the wire. But this one more than stings, and unless Cristobal can get his team from sad to angry in a hurry, a Nevada outfit that came from 17 down to beat Purdue on a 56-yard field goal -- and found its quarterback in the process -- could be a tougher out than it appeared last month.
On the other hand, teams coming off of field-storming wins aren't always the best plays the following week. When a team loses the way Oregon did, you should immediately be thinking about what you know about their mental makeup and whether your available hammer (next week's opponent) is good enough with which to attack. In this case, the hammer is in a traditionally undesirable spot as well, and with both teams facing results that often cause a change in the level of play the following game, you should want a specific read on what happens during the week to make a move on this.
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