Seven weeks into the NFL season and one Saturday deep into the meat of the college football schedule, the picture is starting to come into focus — and not every team likes what it’s showing. Here’s what our team is watching this week on both sides of the ball.
NFL: A Shakeup at the Top and the Bottom
The biggest story in the league right now isn’t really about a game at all. The Philadelphia Eagles confirmed that Jalen Hurts is out for the season due to blood clots, a gutting development for a team that’s already lost several other key contributors and now sits at 2-4. Losing your starting quarterback for the year changes everything about how a team should be valued the rest of the way, and it’s the kind of situation we’ll be tracking closely as backup play gets tested against real opponents.
The Indianapolis Colts made their own headline by firing general manager Chris Ballard on the Monday after a loss to the Titans dropped them to 2-4. Front-office change mid-season is rarely a sign of stability, and it’s worth watching how it affects roster decisions and coaching confidence down the stretch.
The Los Angeles Rams have quietly become one of the more interesting fades in the league. They’re 2-4 after losing to Arizona without scoring a touchdown, and the injury report isn’t helping: Davante Adams is expected to miss six to ten weeks, and Myles Garrett remains out along with two defensive tackles. A team can overcome one or two of those losses — stacking all of them at once is a different problem entirely.
Meanwhile, two teams are still searching for their first win: the Los Angeles Chargers (0-6) and Miami Dolphins (0-5). The Chargers’ offense has struggled to generate consistent production, and reports suggest staff changes could be coming if the trend continues. Winless teams late into October tend to get written off fast by the public, which is exactly when a closer look at matchups and motivation can turn up value the market hasn’t priced in yet.
On the other end, Buffalo (5-1) and Minnesota (5-0) remain the class of their conferences, and both have done it a little differently — Buffalo leaning on late-game execution, Minnesota benefiting from a soft schedule stretch during its bye while contenders around it stumbled. The Cleveland Browns (4-2) have quietly built a first-place position in the AFC North on the back of a defense-first identity, which is the kind of formula that tends to travel well into cold-weather football later in the year.
In New York, the Giants benched Jameis Winston in their loss to New Orleans after his second interception, opening the door to a real look at the quarterback room moving forward. It’s the sort of in-season change that can shift a team’s identity overnight, for better or worse, and we’ll be watching how it plays out before leaning on it either way.
College Football: Miami and BYU Hold Serve, Big Saturday Ahead
The AP Top 25 has Miami at No. 1 and BYU at No. 2, both unbeaten, with Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Georgia rounding out the top five. Indiana has climbed to No. 6 — a genuinely surprising development for a program that wasn’t in the preseason national conversation — and sits at 6-1 heading into a marquee home matchup against Michigan this Saturday, where reports indicate Michigan is set to start Tommy Carr under center.
Saturday’s slate is loaded. No. 1 Miami hosts Pittsburgh, No. 2 BYU travels to UCF, and No. 8 Texas Tech heads to Cincinnati still unbeaten at 6-0. Elsewhere, No. 18 LSU goes on the road to Auburn, No. 13 Alabama hosts Texas A&M, and No. 15 Iowa takes on Minnesota in a Big Ten matchup with more riding on it than the records suggest. Boise State, SMU, Northwestern, and Arizona round out a group of ranked teams all in action, several of them on the road against teams with nothing left to lose — exactly the kind of spot where a close read of motivation and matchup tends to matter more than the betting market’s gut reaction.
Our approach doesn’t change week to week: look at the real factors — injuries, matchup trends, situational spots, line movement — and explain the reasoning before we explain the pick. That’s as true for a game with national title implications as it is for a Tuesday night MAC matchup nobody else is talking about.
That’s our read heading into the weekend. If you want the full breakdown with the lines attached, our team’s picks for both NFL and college football are up now — same process we’ve been running since 1998, just more of it.