As I sit here watching the start of Thursday night football, I am reminded how there’s bound to be matchup’s tonight where the FCS Defense can shutdown a floundering offense. Rutgers may likely win this game by a few scores, but not with the dominances expected and certainly with sputtering offense to start.
There are 22 games tonight, certainly no matchups with ranked teams, but we do have one out of conference matchup between “Power 4” schools and several high ranked FCS schools deserving more attention.
Let’s start with the big game for tonight, North Carolina travels to Minnesota for an opening week matchup with a spread that has wavered near pick’em for most of the week (current UNC -2). Let’s take a closer look at each team. For North Carolina, it is known fact that Drake Maye is off to the NFL to backup Jacoby Brisett (errr… for now) with the New England Patriots, but less known is UNC returns the best running back in the conference in Omarion Hampton who netted over 1500 yards from scrimmage and 15 TDs in 2023. They also return 3 of their 4 leading receivers from Maye’s offense. However, the offense line is going through a full transition with only 59 career starts and 49 of those from their starting center and are struggling to tie themselves to one specific QB. As you can expect, a team with a top QB last season that finished 8-5 had lackluster support at defense, but does return a linebacker with over 100 tackles in Power Echols and an edge rusher in Kamion Rucker with 15 tackles for a loss and 8.5 QB sacks. In the end, projections show UNC steadily in the middle of the ACC standings. As for Minnesota, they also return the top rusher in the conference in yards per game in Darius Taylor (EDIT – missed in the initial write-up, but Taylor is out tonight with back issues, getting on the field has been the challenge in his career to date), but his 799 rushing yards and 5 TDs are only over 6 games as well as their top receiver in Daniel Jackson with 831 receiving yards and 8 TDs. But like UNC, Minnesota is turning the play over to a new QB with a less ceremonial transition. Defensively Minnesota best returning player is Jah Joyner who had 7.5 sacks as defensive end, but where Minnesota excels most is in the kicking game with Dragan Kesich who was 23 for 27 and a long of 54. This leads me to my pick, it all comes down to transition at QB and the solid running game, thus, for that reason alone my pick of the night is Minnesota / North Carolina Under 52.5 at 2.2 units. As for who wins, I started with Minnesota and then went to UNC and cannot really feel good about anyone, so I’ll stay away.
As for the rest of the evening, I will be bouncing games and watching & learning about top teams. The matchup that interests me the most is Colorado versus North Dakota State. I could see both sides of the line hitting, but I do want to see is the impact of Coach Deion Sanders on his superstars QB Shedeur Sanders and WR/CB Travis Hunter. The expectations of both players and the team is high. I worry about the Sanders father and son combination and I feel they could be closer to the bottom of the Big 12, but Deion does strive at times when people doubt him, so maybe that’s motivation. What I do believe, is Travis Hunter, by pure talent and opportunity will set himself up as a top ten pick in the NFL draft.
I may add bets tonight, but I will likely just observe and learn about the teams and come with even more on Friday and Saturday. Football is back, let’s enjoy it!
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