With a full week of college football in the books, the madness is just getting started and we have five bold predictions for week 2 of the 2018 season.
College football returned to our lives in full-force last week and the drama was certainly there, though maybe not in the places that we expected it to be. When looking at the opening-weekend slate of games and the matchups between ranked opponents, the safe assumption would’ve been that these teams would take each other potentially down to the wire to determine a victor. That wasn’t how things played out, though.
The Michigan Wolverines looked awful for the most part and were much farther behind the Notre Dame Fighting Irish than the final score would indicate. The same could be said of the Washington Huskies, who simply looked like a team that’s a tier below the Auburn Tigers. It wasn’t even close in terms of the final score though for teams like the Miami Hurricanes and Florida State Seminoles, however, as they were trounced by the LSU Tigers and Virginia Tech Hokies, respectively.
Instead, the drama largely came from unexpected sources. We saw the Michigan State Spartans in an end-of-week game do everything that they could to choke away a win over Utah State, even though they were ultimately victorious. Meanwhile, another Big Ten school in the Penn State Nittany Lions was dangerously close to falling to Appalachian State before edging them out in overtime.
All of this is to say that, in college football, you can only predict so much in terms of where the drama and memorable moments will come from. That won’t stop us from trying to do just that, however. And with that, let’s take a look at five bold predictions for Week 2 of the 2018 college football season.
5. Feleipe Franks tosses five more touchdowns
You’re allowed a minute to pick your jaws up off the floor, but the Florida Gators actually looked like they knew what offense was last week. Granted, they were playing against Charleston Southern, but the Gators offense actually showed signs of real life for the first time in what feels like an eternity. And, after a wholly forgettable season as the on-and-off starter last year, quarterback Feleipe Franks was at the heart of that.
Franks finished the day filling up the stat sheet. He went 16-of-24 for 219 yards and an impressive five touchdowns through the air and also added a solid rushing performance with five carries for 34 yards. Again, this was against a far inferior Charleston Southern team that Florida could really just bully on every level. However, we’ve seen the Gators in years past face similar teams and not do things like this.
Now the Gators begin their SEC play with a matchup against Kentucky and they should have at least somewhat more difficulty being as dominant. Having said that, I truly believe that this is a new era for the Gators now that Jim McElwain is gone. And I believe that Franks will be the biggest beneficiary of that.
Under McElwain, there simply wasn’t a lot of intelligent coaching going on from both a team and player perspective. That has seemingly changed under Dan Mullen to this point and it showed in the opener. It’s time now to show just how much it’s changed and I believe the new head coach will help his quarterback to again have a big showing in the first conference matchup of 2018.