It’s a loaded week on both sides of the football calendar. The NFL regular season finally kicks off, headlined by Patrick Mahomes’ first real test since a torn ACL and LCL ended his 2025 season early. And in college football, the rankings are still settling after a wild opening week, with the sport’s two most storied programs squaring off Saturday in Austin. Here’s what our team is watching, and why it matters.
NFL Kickoff: Mahomes’ Return and a Trip to Australia
The 2026 NFL season opens Thursday night with the Patriots at the Seahawks, but the storyline our team keeps coming back to is Monday’s matchup: the Broncos at the Chiefs. Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL last year, and while he’s been cleared for practice since July and worked through a full training camp, he hasn’t taken a snap in a preseason game. He’s called the grind of camp “even harder than the regular season” in terms of building his body back up, and his doctors’ original recovery timeline lines up with a Week 1 return. Kansas City has managed his workload carefully all camp, so how he moves and how the coaching staff scripts his early throws will tell us more than the final score.
Sandwiched in between is a piece of NFL history: Friday’s 49ers-Rams game in Melbourne, Australia, streaming on Netflix, the league’s first-ever regular season game on Australian soil. It’s a short week and a long flight for both teams, and travel and scheduling quirks like that tend to show up on the injury report and in slow starts more than most bettors account for.
Sunday brings a full 12-game slate, capped by Cowboys at Giants on Sunday Night Football. Early-season NFL lines move fast as books get real data on personnel and scheme changes, so this is exactly the kind of week where the reasoning behind a number matters more than the number itself.
College Football’s Week 1 Shakeup
The opening weekend reshuffled the sport’s top of the polls more than usual. Ohio State claimed the No. 1 ranking with a 56-3 win over Ball State, a lopsided score but not, in the words of one national analyst, “an easy, absolutely far and away” statement of dominance. Preseason No. 1 Oregon slid after needing everything it had to escape Boise State, a reminder that a win and a convincing win aren’t the same thing this early in the season.
LSU was the week’s biggest riser, jumping to No. 3 behind a Lane Kiffin-coached team that’s answering its critics early. Miami looked the part of a top-five team in a 45-6 win over Stanford, with receiver Malachi Toney turning in a 12-catch, 234-yard performance. And Indiana’s new quarterback, Josh Hoover, gave the Hoosiers’ offense an early identity that has people paying closer attention to a program that’s been easy to overlook in years past.
This Week’s Marquee Matchup: Ohio State at Texas
Saturday’s headline game needs no hype: No. 1 Ohio State travels to Austin to face Texas in what’s being billed as the best game of the young season. Both teams are unbeaten, both have something to prove after Week 1, and both have the kind of roster depth that makes this feel like a playoff preview in September rather than a typical early-season tune-up.
It’s not the only game worth a look. Oklahoma heads to Michigan in a matchup of teams trying to establish themselves as Big Ten and playoff contenders, Oregon gets a road trip to Oklahoma State after last week’s scare, and BYU hosts Arizona in an early look at the Big 12 race. Texas A&M also gets tested at home against Arizona State. Busy Saturday, and one where the gap between a good team and a great one starts to show.
What This Means Heading Into the Weekend
Both leagues are still in the phase of the season where injuries, travel, and unproven personnel matter more than history or reputation, and that’s exactly the kind of week our team likes digging into. We’re not in the business of guarantees, and a game like Ohio State-Texas or a banged-up team coming off a long flight from Melbourne is a good reminder why: the reasoning behind a line matters more than the line itself.
Free picks are up daily this week across both sports, and if you want the deeper breakdown, NFL Sunday Top Picks and College Power Plays are both live now with the full reasoning behind each game our team likes. Same process we’ve been running since ’98, just more of it when the schedule’s this stacked.