Week 1: College football players to watch
Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz preview the Week 1 slate in college football and spotlight the players to keep an eye on this weekend. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV .
Video Transcript
One player I'm gonna be looking at is Anais Williams, the Notre Dame running back.
Notre Dame takes on Wisconsin this weekend.
I was looking for a Power Four on Power Four matchup because there's so many great players that I'm excited to watch either make their return or make their debut, but it's in not so great matchups.
And I don't think Wisconsin is necessarily a juggernaut, but it's definitely gonna give, you know, Notre Dame a, a more of a fight than maybe Furman is going to give Tennessee, or East Carolina might give Alabama, or some of these other matchups that we're seeing this weekend.
Anais Williams has been waiting his turn, you know, behind Jeremiah Love, behind Jeriorian Price, behind so many of these elite running backs that have recently worn a Notre Dame uniform.
He's just kind of been sitting back and waiting his turn.
And now is his opportunity alongside CJ Carr.
So I'm excited to see, you know, with all of the recent success that we've seen some, from some Notre Dame running backs and the way that their offensive coordinator, Mike Denbrock, can so beautifully coordinate an offense.
I'm excited to see what he adds to this Notre Dame offense.
Stunning to me that Notre Dame is a 20 and a half point favorite.
Oh, how Wisconsin has fallen through the, landscape of the modern college football world.
All right.
I, I love that pick by you.
I also struggled because I wanted to find games that I thought had meaning to try and find performance, and I just really couldn't find one I loved.
But there is one player in a game with no meaning that does have a ton of pressure, and that's Bryce Underwood from Michigan.
They take on Western Michigan.
That's gonna be a huge win for them.
There's no doubt about that.
But as I said with Jordan Maiava at USC, sometimes you gotta get the easy in front of you, right?
Like, you just gotta take care of the easy business.
Last year, Bryce Underwood completed 60% of his passes, 11 touchdowns, nine interceptions, in what was considered by most to be a failure of a year for somebody that walked into that school with massive expectations.
And this year, especially important for all my college football fantasy football players, Bryce Underwood's got a very up-and-down schedule.
Western Michigan week one, then Oklahoma, then UTEP, then Iowa, then Minnesota, then Penn State, right?
So they've got a very every other schedule.
They've gotta find a way to take the easy plays and get the easy wins for Bryce Underwood, even though I think Michigan obviously is gonna run away with this game.
This is a weekend to play the first half spreads because starters are gonna be sitting in the second half.
Even though I love every ounce of where Michigan should be for this game, I do think seeing Bryce Underwood come out and have a really competent game is an important part of the building pieces.
Otherwise, if he's bad in this game, if he's anything less than great in this game and then goes into Oklahoma, a game at Michigan, but takes on Oklahoma after that and it looks ugly, woo, things will get ugly quickly for Bryce Underwood.
