Aaand… we're back! God bless you, college football — I've missed you so much. Anyway, welcome back. This column is "Six Pack Games of the Week" and it features me taking a look at six of the top games of the weekend. I generally try to share the love among conferences, but this week is a little heavy on the SEC, thanks to an abundance of interesting-looking games involving SEC teams (and a paucity of interesting-looking games involving teams from other leagues). Ready? Good. Let's get started.
Early warning: there's a lot of SEC action in this week's Six Pack, but that's because they're about the only conference playing many opponents worth a damn. I'm not going to waste time talking about teams playing South Texas Tech (so when SEC teams do get around to playing those teams — in November — you can expect me to write more about other leagues then). Anyway, first up is Mississippi State and Oklahoma State, two teams looking to rebound from semi-disappointing 8-5 campaigns. Mississippi State started out 7-0 last year, but crashed and burned when they hit the difficult part of their schedule. Admittedly, playing Alabama, Texas A&M, and LSU back-to-back-to-back (with Bama and LSU on the road) is no picnic, but they still got beat by a combined 76 points — ouch. They rebounded with a win over Arkansas, then closed out the year with double-digit losses to in-state rival Ole Miss and Northwestern in the Gator Bowl. Oklahoma State had their own struggles with top opponents — three of their five losses came against ranked opponents (Texas, Kansas State, and Oklahoma). They also enter the season down a key cog, with LT Devin Davis out with a torn ACL. Still, they appear to have the more potent offensive weapons and they're at home, which seems like enough to put them over the top here.
THE PICK: OKLAHOMA STATE 38, MISSISSIPPI STATE 31
#1 ALABAMA VS VIRGINIA TECH (5:30pm ET, ESPN)
There's a bit of an unofficial SEC-ACC Challenge going on this weekend; the SEC drew first blood with South Carolina's win over inter-state rival North Carolina on Thursday night, but the fun continues with Alabama-Virginia Tech and Georgia-Clemson on Saturday. Bama-Virginia Tech is up first, with the two-time defending national champions playing Virginia Tech in the Ride's home away from home, the Georgia Dome. The last time the Tide played here we were treated to one of the most thrilling games of the 2012 college football season, with Bama and Georgia trading haymakers for sixty minutes in the SEC Championship Game. I don't expect Bama to be pushed nearly as much in this game. Despite the annual exodus of enough talent to the NFL that most programs would be crippled, Bama is not short on talent at just about any position; such is the cold, clinical beauty of the recruiting juggernaut that Nick Saban has constructed in Tuscaloosa. The Hokies have a dynamic QB in Logan Thomas, but Thomas alone cannot slay the Tide. The Bama Death Star will roll on.
THE PICK: ALABAMA 34, VIRGINIA TECH 10
WASHINGTON STATE at AUBURN (7:00pm ET, WatchESPN) — Leach v. Malzahn!
Objectively speaking, there may be better or more important games than this one, but sometimes you have to put considerations like that on the back burner. Sometimes you just want to sit back and stop worrying about whether a game's important to this race or that set of rankings and just enjoy a game purely because it's fun. And it's hard to find a more fun-looking game on the Week 1 slate than Washington State vs. Auburn, assuming you enjoy offensive football. It's Mike Leach bringing Year 2 of his Wazzu experiment to Auburn to face Year 1 of Gus Malzahn's Tigers. Leach and Malzahn are still molding these teams and they're sure to be fairly rough products, but it's hard to resist a chance to see two of football's preeminent mad scientists try to out-scheme one another. That alone should be worth giving this game some attention on Saturday night. Leach is the more experienced coach, but I think Malzahn has a significant talent advantage, which will be enough to push Auburn over the top.
THE PICK: AUBURN 38, WASHINGTON STATE 35
The third and final leg of this weekend's ACC-SEC Challenge should be the best game of them all — if only because it pits too teams that look pretty evenly matched on paper. It should also provide more thrills, chills, and offensive fireworks than the South Carolina and Alabama games, two games featuring defense-first brutes methodically grinding their opponents to dust. Georgia has several question marks on defense (first and foremost among them: how to replace stud LB/DE Jarvis Jones), but they have talent to burn on offense, led by QB Aaron Murray and the two-headed RB monster of Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall. Clemson counters with its own offensive stars, though, led by QB Tajh Boyd and top WR Sammy Watkins. Boyd and Murray had eerily similar stat lines a year ago:
Murray: 64.5%, 3893 yards, 36 TD, 10 INT
Boyd: 67.2%, 3896, 36 TD, 13 INT
Boyd can also make plays with his legs (he ran for 514 yards and 10 TD on the ground last year) and may need to do more of that this year, without RB Andre Ellington (1081 yards, 8 TD). Both teams are loaded with fast, talented athletes and both are quarterbacked by experienced, play-making quarterbacks. Both teams also have question marks on defense, so it would be surprise if this wasn't a bit of a shootout. I'll side with Georgia, since they should have slightly better offensive balance with Murray and the Gurley-Marshall duo.
THE PICK: GEORGIA 31, CLEMSON 27
The third big SEC game of the day doesn't involve an ACC team, but it does feature a border brawl between a team from Texas (TCU) and a team from Louisiana (LSU). It also features two teams known best for featuring brutal, hard-hitting, point-sapping defenses. LSU lost a slew of players to the NFL draft but, like Alabama, it's a rinse, repeat game for the Tigers; they'll just plug in new guys who will be drafted by the NFL in a year or two. The biggest defensive news is probably the guy who isn't playing for TCU, top pass rusher Devonte Fields (suspended). TCU is already outgunned by LSU, but it certainly doesn't help their odds of pulling the upset to have one of their biggest guns out of commission. That said, Gary Patterson is a great defensive mind, he's know that he wouldn't have Fields for weeks, and he's had months to prepare for LSU — I suspect he'll have a pretty good plan in place anyway. But sometimes talent trumps plans, which is what I expect to happen here. This should be a tight, cagey game for a while, but I expect LSU to pull away in the second half.
THE PICK: LSU 24, TCU 14
Finally! A game NOT involving an SEC team! The nightcap to Saturday's action looks like a good one, with a Northwestern team carrying high expectations (a preseason top-25 ranking and buzz as a dark horse contender in the Big Ten Legends division) heading out west to face a Cal team led by new head coach Sonny Dykes. Northwestern returns the majority of their key players from a year ago, when they went 10-3 and won their first bowl game in several decades (since 1949, to be precise). The trick for them now will be proving that they can with under the burden of expectations; Northwestern under Pat Fitzgerald has relished the underdog role, but that won't be the case in several of their games this season — including this one. This game looks like a tricky one, given the long trip out West (which rarely seems to go well for teams from the East or Midwest; just ask some of Northwestern's fellow B1G teams) and the fact that Cal is a completely unpredictable entity under Dykes. Longtime HC Jeff Tedford was handed his walking papers a season ago after the steady decline of the Cal program became too much to bear (er, no pun intended); in his place is another offensive guru, Sonny Dykes, formerly of Louisiana Tech. Dykes has some holes to fill (particularly at QB, where it looks like he'll be starting a true freshman), but he does have some talent to work with, including speedy RB Brandon Bigelow. I think Cal rides the emotion and unpredictability of Dykes' debut to an upset here.
THE PICK: CAL 34, NORTHWESTERN 31
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