College Football Is Back: Week 1 Picks, PLL Playoffs & NFL South Chaos | FeOTB Ep. 288

There are certain weekends on the sports calendar that just feel different.

Opening Day. The first Thursday night of the NFL season. The first real weekend of March Madness.

And then there is the first full weekend of college football.

I don't care what little kids say about Christmas. Give me fresh-cut grass, a couch, a remote, 12 games going at once and absolutely no reason to leave the house. This is the most wonderful time of the year.

Episode 288 of The Far End of the Bench arrives right as the sports calendar starts to turn toward fall. Niko is coming off a trip to Minnesota for the PLL Playoffs, college football finally has a real Week 1 slate, our NFL division previews reach the AFC and NFC South, fantasy managers are trying to survive the final wave of roster movement and off-field uncertainty, and somehow the Los Angeles Clippers found another way to end up in Benchwarmer of the Week territory.

In other words: we're back.

The PLL Playoffs Deliver Exactly What They Should

We opened with the Premier Lacrosse League because Niko had about as close of a view of the first round as anybody could ask for.

Unfortunately for the California Redwoods, that meant watching their season end in a 15-14 loss to Denver.

And I will use the word survive.

Denver built its lead, California kept chopping away, and the Redwoods gave themselves legitimate chances to tie it before ultimately running out of time. Niko obviously wasn't thrilled with the result, but even he gave Denver its credit: the Outlaws played a hell of a game and showed exactly why a roster with that much talent is still dangerous once the playoffs begin.

The bigger conversation now shifts to the semifinals.

Denver gets Utah after the Archers already beat them twice during the regular season. That brings up one of the oldest arguments in sports: how hard is it to beat the same team three times?

Utah also gets a massive reinforcement with Tom Schreiber returning from injured reserve. On the other side of the bracket, Boston has to figure out whether its defense and possession game can slow down a Philadelphia offense that Niko described as potentially one of the most explosive the league has seen.

There is enough parity in the PLL that a 6-6 team can absolutely make a championship run. That's part of what makes this postseason interesting. You can get a defensive rock fight one night and a 15-14 track meet the next.

Niko's rooting interest now that California is eliminated?

Basically nobody.

Which is exactly the kind of unbiased analysis we strive for here at The Far End of the Bench.

College Football Week 1: Stop Telling Me There Are No Good Games

One thing I kept hearing heading into Labor Day weekend was that Week 1 didn't have enough marquee games.

I reject the premise.

Is Week 2 more loaded? Sure. But if you look at this weekend and can't find something worth watching, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you just don't like college football.

We put together an eight-game live pick slate, starting where we always should: Colorado.

Colorado at Georgia Tech is going to tell us a lot about the Buffaloes very quickly. CU enters another season with enormous roster turnover, a young quarterback in JuJu Lewis and new coordinators. My biggest question is simple: what does this look like at halftime?

If CU is still hanging around, I think that game becomes very interesting. If Georgia Tech is controlling the line of scrimmage and running the football at will, we may have our answer about this version of Colorado much earlier than anyone wants.

Then comes the 118th Border War.

Jim Mora's debut at Colorado State comes against Wyoming, and Niko didn't exactly leave much room for interpretation:

Wyoming has no shot.

The Rams are at home, Mora arrives with a track record of making programs more competitive than people expect, and this feels like the perfect opportunity for CSU to begin a new era by beating one of the schools its fanbase absolutely hates losing to.

Then there is Air Force against Duquesne. Air Force's history against FCS opponents at Falcon Stadium, Troy Calhoun's record in these games, the altitude and an offense Duquesne rarely has to prepare for made this the easiest Colorado pick of the week. The real questions about Air Force won't start until the Mountain West schedule does.

From there we went national.

Clemson-LSU is the headliner. Niko sees an opportunity for Clemson to reestablish itself in a new era. I still believe Lane Kiffin, Sam Leavitt and the LSU offense have enough to figure it out at home.

We also hit Louisville-Ole Miss, the Labor Day matchup between SMU and Florida State, and Boise State at Oregon.

That Boise-Oregon game might have the most interesting stakes even if Oregon is clearly the more talented team. Boise doesn't necessarily have to win, but it can't walk out of Autzen Stadium looking like it doesn't belong on the same field. A competitive loss can still become part of a playoff résumé. Getting run out of Eugene by 30 points could follow Boise all the way into December.

And then we finished with Baylor-Auburn, where we finally got a true split.

Niko went Auburn.

I went Baylor.

Plant the flag now.

That's why we make the picks.

The AFC South Might Actually Be Interesting

We saved the South divisions for last during our NFL preview series for a reason.

They are weird.

The AFC version, at least, has legitimate intrigue.

Houston still has what we believe can be one of the league's best defenses, and that alone makes the Texans the team everyone else has to knock off. Jacksonville showed enough last season to make this more than a one-team race, Tennessee has a second-year Cam Ward and more weapons around him, and Indianapolis is sitting in the kind of quarterback limbo that can either unexpectedly produce eight or nine wins or completely blow up.

Our overall conclusion was that Houston remains the safest choice to win the AFC South, with Jacksonville as the biggest threat. The Texans don't necessarily need C.J. Stroud to turn back into an MVP candidate. With that defense, getting consistently solid quarterback play might be enough.

Indianapolis is where things get ugly.

At some point the Colts have to figure out whether Anthony Richardson is part of the solution, whether Daniel Jones can stabilize anything, or whether this entire experiment ends with Indianapolis staring at another highly drafted quarterback.

That's how we ended up wondering whether the AFC South might eventually need to be relegated back to college football.

Which leads us to something even more disgusting.

Welcome to the NFC South Sickos Division

The NFC South is for people who don't merely like football.

You have to be sick enough to watch it.

Tampa Bay is still our safest pick because Baker Mayfield gives the Buccaneers the most trustworthy quarterback situation in the division. That doesn't mean Tampa has no concerns, but when you compare them to the alternatives, it becomes much easier.

Carolina still has to prove Bryce Young can take the step we've been waiting for.

Atlanta has talent but remains surrounded by quarterback questions.

New Orleans is New Orleans.

This is the division where we started joking that the fanbases are probably college football fans first anyway. Atlanta fans have Georgia. Carolina fans have Clemson or North Carolina. Tampa has Florida, Florida State and Miami. New Orleans has LSU.

And maybe that is for the best.

Niko ultimately stuck with Tampa Bay first and Atlanta second, followed by Carolina and New Orleans. My own path involved way too much filibustering before arriving back at the same basic conclusion: Tampa is the team that should win this division, and there probably isn't a wild-card team coming behind them.

If you're watching every NFC South game this season, congratulations.

You're one of us.

Fantasy Football: Stock Up, Stock Down and Stay Away

Fantasy drafts aren't just about evaluating the player anymore.

You have to evaluate the player, the roster around him, his new quarterback, his new coach, his injury situation and sometimes whatever is happening away from the field.

So we ran through several of the biggest situation changes before Week 1.

Kenneth Walker moving to Kansas City? We saw stock-up potential because the Chiefs' changing offense could create opportunities.

A.J. Brown in New England? Another stock up, especially because of the potential fit with Drake Maye and a passing game that could feature Brown differently than Philadelphia did.

Mike Evans in San Francisco was the opposite. There are simply too many established mouths to feed in that offense, and at this stage of his career, we don't love paying for the name when the weekly volume could be inconsistent. That doesn't make him undraftable. It makes him much more of a flex/stash option than somebody I want carrying my receiver room.

We were higher on Travis Etienne because if New Orleans is going to manufacture offense, somebody has to touch the football. A lot.

Then we got into the players surrounded by off-field uncertainty.

That's where roster construction matters more than ever. If you already have established starters and want to take a late swing on somebody with enormous upside, fine. If you're drafting that player expecting him to carry your lineup from Week 1? That's where you're asking for trouble.

Puka Nacua was the perfect example of that debate. His fantasy ceiling when available is undeniable, which is why Niko couldn't really call him a true stock down. But there's enough uncertainty that moving him above the elite receivers without those questions becomes difficult.

The lesson is pretty simple:

Don't draft names. Draft situations.

Player of the Week & Benchwarmer of the Week

My awards stayed entirely in college football.

Player of the Week: Xavier Lewis, North Carolina.

Lewis was a huge part of North Carolina getting the result it needed in Ireland and giving Bill Belichick a little breathing room in Chapel Hill. The graphic tells the story: seven tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss and two sacks. He lived in the backfield.

College football is back, and defensive linemen ruining people's afternoons are back with it.

My Benchwarmer of the Week went to Sonny Dykes and TCU.

Travel thousands of miles to Ireland, score 10 points, pile up penalties, give away a safety and disappear offensively for almost the entire second half?

That's elite Benchwarmer behavior.

Niko originally had Odell Beckham Jr. as his Player of the Week before making a mid-show audible.

Then Cale Makar got paid.

That'll do it.

Makar became Niko's Player of the Week, because when you have one of the best defensemen — and arguably one of the best players, period — in hockey, you don't get cute. You keep him in Colorado.

And his Benchwarmer?

The Los Angeles Clippers.

There are organizations that have bad weeks, and then there are organizations that somehow continue finding new chapters for the eventual business-school course titled How Not to Run a Professional Sports Franchise.

Niko went all the way back through the Kawhi Leonard-Paul George era, the draft capital that disappeared, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander becoming a superstar somewhere else and the latest punishment discussed on the show.

At some point all you can do is stare at Clippers fans and ask:

How are you still doing this?

Football Is Here. Good Luck Getting Us Off the Couch.

Episode 288 felt like the official changing of the sports calendar.

The PLL is reaching its championship stretch. Fantasy rosters are taking shape. The NFL is almost here.

And college football has finally arrived.

This weekend doesn't need Ohio State-Texas or a dozen top-10 matchups to get me excited. Give me CU trying to prove everybody wrong in Atlanta. Give me the Border War. Give me Death Valley at night. Give me Labor Day football. Give me Boise trying to protect its playoff credibility before September is even a week old.

The waiting is over.

We'll see you at The Far End of the Bench.