Saturday's prediction.
#33: Illinois beats Missouri. Finally. After 4 consecutive defeats. The last Illini win over the Tigers was in 1994, at home. This year's game is played week 1, in St. Louis.
Sunday's prediction.
#32: Someone will lose to a I-AA team again this season. App State shocked Michigan 2 years ago and it has popped up several times since then. It also happened a few times before that. It's gonna happen, and I'm guessing we won't have to wait much longer than week 1, where several candidates exist: NDSU (already has 3 wins over I-A teams and 2 losses by 3 points or less!) at Iowa State, Northern Iowa at Iowa, App State at ECU, Citadel at UNC, Richmond at Duke, Southern at La-Lafayette, MVSU at Arkansas State, SFA at SMU. I'm not saying all of those will happen, but I wouldn't be shocked to see at least 1 from that group!
Monday's prediction.
#31: Jerry Hughes will not win MWC Defensive Player of the Year. He is going to start seeing some double and triple teams. QBs, O-Linemen, and coaches will study his tendencies and gameplan around him. The player of the year is usually the player with the best stats, and because teams will gameplan with avoiding him in mind, he will not win the award. A defensive player for TCU may still win the award, but it will not be reigning POY and pre-season favorite Jerry Hughes.
Today's prediction.
#30: Utah's defense will give up 20 points a game this season after giving up only 17.23 last season, 16.85 in 2007, and 19.85 in 2006. A lot of reasons to this:
The schedule is tougher this year. They don't have King Louie this year, i.e. the D won't have teams pinned inside the 20 at the start of each possession. The O will turn the ball over more. The O won't move the ball as much when they don't turn it over. Field position is crucial and they won't have it as good this season. Gary Andersen, the D-Coordinator for each of those consecutive sub-20 seasons, is gone. Add all of that together, and the D would have to be absolutely spectacular to stay under 20 points per game this season. It will still be a really good D, but you can't consistently be put in bad situations and succeed, especially after losing several NFL-calibre players.
Glad to see you back. I was missing your daily prediction. Number 30 has me excited. It will be fun to watch Utah without King Louis. I like how everyone talks about replacing Brian Johnson, but King Louis is the real loss.
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