The Week 1 watch
We have a surprisingly good number of big, primetime battles this weekend to open things up.
The optimal schedule set-up is to have a decent but largely overmatched squad as your Week 1 opponent. That way you can stress test some players and concepts and not have to have all your ducks in a row until Week 2, when perhaps you have your big opening contest against a big time, non-conference opponent.
Next week we’ll get a bunch of big time games, headlined by the Texas-Michigan matchup. This week though…there is a surprisingly solid slate of big time teams with major hopes for the 2024 season who will have to put a lot on the line right off the bat.
A few of these games are almost like playoff preliminaries. It’s hard to be eliminated by a single game at the beginning of the season with an expanded playoff and automatic qualification for conference championships but….some of these teams have schedules that will quickly become prohibitive if they drop early games.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to America's War Game to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.