Duke quarterback Darian Mensah is returning to New Orleans to face his former team, Tulane.
The quarterback has found Durham to be a ‘perfect place’ and was named a team captain for the 2025 season.
Mensah signed a reported $8 million NIL deal upon transferring to Duke.

The last time Duke football quarterback Darian Mensah was in New Orleans was for Mardi Gras this past March.

Six months later, the former Tulane quarterback is back in New Orleans, not for beads or parades, but to face his former team for the first time since transferring to Duke in December 2024.

Mensah spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons in New Orleans after committing to the Green Wave – the first program to offer him and the lone Bowl Subdivision school to do so – out of St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria, California. He redshirted his freshman season before throwing for 2,732 yards and 22 touchdowns in 2024 to lead the Green Wave to the American Athletic championship game, where they fell to Army.

Days later, he entered the transfer portal, where he was ESPN’s No. 3-rated player.

The return Saturday to Yulman Stadium is described as a ‘weird’ one by Mensah, who will be going up against former teammates, some of whom he spent Mardi Gras with alongside his family, playing in a stadium where he spent time the first two years of his college career.

‘Those are my guys still to this day,’ Mensah said.

At the same time, playing against his former teammates in a stadium he knows so well brings a sense of familiarity – not just for Mensah but for the Green Wave, too.

‘We know Darian well,’ Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall said, ‘he knows us pretty well, too.’

Durham, North Carolina: The ‘perfect place’ for Darian Mensah

Two days after entering the transfer portal, Mensah got his first taste of Duke on an official visit where he was welcomed by the Cameron Crazies in attendance for Duke basketball’s game against Incarnate Ward. Not long after, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound quarterback announced his transfer, inking a reported $8 million NIL deal.

Academically, Mensah said Duke isn’t much more rigorous than Tulane, with both universities ranking among the top 100 in ‘U.S. News & World Report’s’ 2025 Best Colleges rankings: Duke at No. 6 and Tulane No. 63. City-wise, though, New Orleans’ lively vibe differs from that of Durham’s more chill, relaxed setting, which reminds Mensah of his hometown of San Luis Obispo, California, despite being more than 2,500 miles apart.

Mensah noted that he has his own house for the first time in Durham, adding to the homey feeling of his new city.

‘Durham is the perfect place for me,’ Mensah said.

That comfort off the field has carried over onto the gridiron. Mensah quickly earned the trust of his teammates and became a leader in the Blue Devils locker room, being named one of Duke’s four team captains for 2025. Through the Blue Devils’ first two games, Mensah has thrown for 723 yards and five touchdowns while being intercepted once.

‘He’s magical,’ Duke wide receiver Cooper Barkate said following Duke’s season-opening win over Elon. ‘Probably everyone has told you that, but he really is.’

Darian Mensah’s return to New Orleans

While Mensah’s last trip to New Orleans was in March, his last time seeing Sumrall was this past summer at the wedding of Green Wave quarterbacks coach Collin D’Angelo. It was nothing but love between Mensah and his former coach.

‘I probably spent more time with him at the wedding than did I anybody, other than maybe my wife,’ Sumrall said.

‘If you play one snap for me or 100 or 1000, I love you for as long as I live.’

Facing a former team isn’t new to Duke personnel either. Duke football coach Manny Diaz knows all too well what it’s like, as the former Miami coach found himself on the sidelines of Hard Rock Stadium when Duke made the trip to face the Hurricanees in November 2024.

‘I always say it’s awkward, especially before the game,’ Diaz said. ‘But that first play, it just becomes ball and everyone’s trying to do their job. I suspect that’ll probably be the way it’ll go Saturday.”

Same goes for Duke offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jonathan Brewer, who formerly coached at SMU and led Duke against the Mustangs last year.

Brewer said him and Mensah have discussed his return to New Orleans since Mensah’s arrival on campus.

‘You’d be lying to say you weren’t more emotional in that game, that’s just what it is, it’s human nature,’ Brewer said. ‘You just need to know how to control your emotions, how to control adversity when bad things happen and not overreact.’

And while Mensah has settled in Durham, there’s one thing he still misses from New Orleans. He hopes to fit in a stop while he’s back in town.

‘That gumbo in Louisiana is always A-1,’ he said.

Anna Snyder covers Duke for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her atasnyder@gannett.com or follow her@annaesnydr on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Week 1’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ showdown between AFC powerhouses Baltimore and Buffalo was one of the best games of opening week. Both quarterbacks put on a show on the field in a thrilling 41-40 win for the Bills.

But an off-field skirmish drew some attention between Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and a fan at Highmark Stadium. The NBC broadcast appeared to show the fan hitting both Jackson and Ravens wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins on the helmet after the two connected on a 29-yard touchdown pass.

Jackson responded by shoving the fan back into their seat. The league has since banned the person who shoved the two Ravens players ‘indefinitely’ from NFL stadiums.

‘My apologies to him,’ Jackson said. ‘Just chill next time. You can talk trash and stuff, but keep your hands to yourself.’

He was also asked about what appeared to be a bottle or can being thrown at Ravens running back Derrick Henry during the game.

‘That’s crazy,’ Jackson said. ‘Stuff like that shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t [the WWE], we’re playing football out here… keep your hands and keep your objects to yourself.’

Days after Williams was outdueled by 2024 draftmate J.J. McCarthy, more questions arise.
The No. 1 pick of the 2024 draft, five more quarterbacks were picked after Williams in a record-tying first round.
The Bears are now 5-13 with Williams as their starter.

Trafficking in “generational talent” can be a very tricky and professionally perilous endeavor for NFL teams.

Monday night served a stark reminder, when Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears collapsed in a 27-24 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, who rode a comeback engineered by second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy. It didn’t take long in the aftermath for questions to arise as to whether McCarthy, his professional debut delayed by a year after a knee injury in the 2024 preseason wiped out his rookie campaign, might already be a superior quarterback to Williams, the No. 1 pick of the 2024 draft (nine spots ahead of McCarthy).

“He absolutely would (be) – based on one game,” former NFL cornerback and current ESPN analyst Domonique Foxworth said on ‘Get Up’ Tuesday morning.

“It’s such a prisoner of the moment move.”

Fair and fair. Yet pending a quick and dramatic turnaround, it’s a narrative to which Williams may be subject to a lifetime sentence.

He’s essentially been issued one verdict after Jayden Daniels, whom the Washington Commanders selected in the spot after Williams, produced what was almost inarguably the greatest rookie season of all time in 2024, willing a recently wayward franchise all the way to the NFC championship game. Williams, by comparison, had a sometimes-up-but-mostly-down rookie season, the Bears finishing 5-12 and making their first midseason coaching change after more than a century of operations.

Good luck finding anybody who’d take Williams over Daniels now.

But the Bears wasted little time pulling the trigger on Williams a year ago. Could Chicago general manager Ryan Poles have picked Daniels had he even wanted to – politically, professionally or from a public relations standpoint? We may never get an insightful answer. Fourteen years after wrestling with the Peyton Manning-Ryan Leaf debate in 1998, the Indianapolis Colts wasted little time going with Andrew Luck over Robert Griffin III. Former Houston Texans GM Charley Casserly famously chose defensive end Mario Williams No. 1 in 2006 over Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush, who was clearly the people’s choice given he was expected to be the next Gale Sayers. (Bush was good but hardly Sayers.)

Assessing generational talents can be tricky undertakings indeed, including Trevor Lawrence, “tank for Tua,” et al. Due diligence remains crucial − John Elway doesn’t come around very often.

But matters could be worsening for Williams, who was widely anointed as a presumptive No. 1 pick years ago, whether that happened when he took command of the Oklahoma Sooners midway through his freshman season in 2021 or when he won the 2022 Heisman for USC. Like Luck or Lawrence before him, it wasn’t really a question as to if Williams would hear his name called to kick off an NFL draft but merely when.

It hasn’t even been 18 months since that outcome actually materialized but whispers are already surfacing that Williams might wind up being the worst of the record-tying (along with the legendary ’83 draft) six quarterbacks taken in the 2024 draft’s first round.

Is the mounting noise reasonable – especially given McCarthy has started all of one NFL game, 17 fewer than Williams? No. Is it an occupational hazard? Most definitely.

“Man, it’s looking pretty rough,” former New York Giants vice president of player personnel Marc Ross told USA TODAY Sports.

“The biggest revelation is the mental part of it for him. It’s really holding him back.”

As Williams tries to adapt to Chicago’s rookie head coach, avowed offensive wunderkind Ben Johnson, he’s also trying to break habits that served him well in college but haven’t in the NFL – namely, holding the ball too long in a bid to make a play, taking too many sacks (a league-worst 68 in 2024) and struggling to make plays out of structure.

“The real issue that I see for Caleb,” said Foxworth, “is that he never seems comfortable, even on his good plays.”

Make no mistake, the Bears undermined Williams organizationally in 2024, failing to give him a seasoned offensive coordinator or an experienced backup to help him navigate the early trials and tribulations of being a professional, among other failings. (Conversely, the Vikings have done the exact opposite, providing McCarthy with a top-tier supporting cast.)

But after a 2025 offseason that seemingly included a strong draft, promising free agent haul and hiring of perhaps the most coveted HC candidate in years, Johnson himself has been obviously frustrated with the trajectory of the offense this summer.

As he did in his preseason debut last month, Williams was a house of fire at Monday’s outset, completing his first 10 passes against Minnesota and capping Chicago’s opening drive with a 9-yard touchdown run, his first in the NFL.

But, similar to the preseason contest against Buffalo in August, it seemed the further Williams got from Johnson’s opening script, the more he struggled. He completed just 11 of his final 25 passes Monday, and the offense didn’t find the end zone again until he hit Rome Odunze for a TD with little more than two minutes to go – a score that was largely cosmetic.

“First drive – scripted. Second drive – still scripted,” said Ross, now an analyst for NFL Network. “Now he’s gotta go play, now he’s gotta do it on his own, now he’s gotta adjust.

“And the Vikings figured it out, and he couldn’t really do anything after that. He doesn’t have the capacity mentally to handle it all and say, ‘OK, I can make adjustments, I can change (based) on what they’re doing to me.’”

And whether it was indecisiveness or inaccuracy, Williams missed tight end Cole Kmet breaking free across the middle at one point and failed to hit wide-open DJ Moore as the wideout was running uncovered toward the pylon with 2:26 to go for a surefire touchdown that would have provided the Bears with more time to potentially win or tie the game with one more defensive stop.

A day after the game, Johnson’s assessment of the offense essentially aligns with Ross’, if (obviously) not as pointed.

 “I’m still getting to know the player,” Johnson said of Williams. “I thought he started off really well early in that game, and then it certainly, as the game went, seemed to fizzle a little bit and then towards the end he came to life again. That’s something that we’ll have to work through.”

Chicago’s finish paled in comparison to the one orchestrated by McCarthy, who was brutal for the first three quarters of his debut but led Minnesota to three touchdowns in the final period – two courtesy of McCarthy’s arm and one coming thanks to his legs.

To say McCarthy is definitively better than Williams at this juncture is folly, recency bias at its worst. The same is true of the New England Patriots’ Drake Maye and Atlanta Falcons’ Michael Penix Jr. To be sure, Maye, Penix and McCarthy all have their advocates, each of them flashing estimable potential in relatively brief windows. Meanwhile, Williams’ 18 NFL starts matches that trio’s combined total, all of them still relative unknowns whom defenses haven’t had sufficient time to study and appropriately attack.

“Here’s the thing with quarterbacks, you can only fool people for so long – you can only trick defense so long, you can only out-scheme people and hide before they have to do it,” says Ross.

“That’s independent of a new offensive line, independent of receivers, play calling – they have to it. And the best quarterbacks, the great quarterbacks, are able to control the game and manipulate the game and raise the level of everyone before they get figured out.”

Daniels and Bo Nix, who led the Denver Broncos to a surprise playoff berth in 2024, are unquestionably well ahead of Williams. Right now. Though, in fairness, there are plenty of examples of players like former New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, who (briefly) appeared like he’d be a better pro than Matthew Stafford, the No. 1 overall pick in 2009, four spots ahead of Sanchez. Stafford will go to the Hall of Fame whenever he’s done playing. Sanchez was done a long time ago, now a fixture in broadcast booths.

Still, Sanchez played a huge role in taking the Jets to two AFC championship games. Bears fans can currently only hope Williams achieves such results. And given Johnson and Poles, who recently signed an extension, are both under contract through the 2029 season, pressure is shifting toward Williams to produce at a time when franchises are increasingly willing to cut bait on first-round quarterbacks – even top-five picks.

The Bears next face the wounded Lions in Detroit. McCarthy and Penix, meanwhile, will square off in the Sunday night spotlight.

To his credit, Williams remains publicly unbowed.

“I think it’s a growing process,” he said Monday.

“It’s going to keep growing from here. The start, this is the start, but definitely not the end.”

But given how grace periods for young players have all but dried up, it could be coming much more quickly than anyone would have once thought.

The New York Yankees held a moment of silence in remembrance of Charlie Kirk before Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers.

Kirk was shot and killed during a speaking event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, earlier in the day.

He was a right-wing talk show host who founded Turning Point USA, a conservative youth-focused organization, in 2012.

He also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in 2024. 

Kirk was a known ally of President Donald Trump, who confirmed Kirk’s death after the shooting on the college campus.

Trump is scheduled to make an appearance at Yankee Stadium, where the team is expected to hold a pregame ceremony to recognize the victims and heroes of 9/11.

The Big Ten currently distributes revenue almost equally, with most members receiving about $63.2 million in 2024.
Other conferences, like the ACC and Mountain West, have already adopted tiered revenue distribution based on viewership or brand value.
Ohio State may face resistance from other Big Ten schools who would be unwilling to accept a smaller share of the revenue.

Ohio State is open to the possibility of changes to the Big Ten’s current revenue-sharing arrangement and how the university approaches athletics department funding, school president Ted Carter told USA TODAY Sports.

“I will say that there’s only a couple of schools that really represent the biggest brands in the Big Ten, and you can see that by the TV viewership,” said Carter.

Ohio State is not the first school to push for different levels of revenue sharing, nor would the Big Ten be the first to disburse tiered amounts of annual payouts.

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The Mountain West distributes more money to Boise State because of a carveout related to television revenue that pays the Broncos an additional $1.8 million per season. (Boise is poised to join the Pac-12 in 2026.) The ACC recently adopted a system that will distribute 60% of TV revenue based on a weighted five-year average of viewership.

But there are a few major differences between the steps taken by those conferences and the potential fallout should Ohio State push the Big Ten to adopt a dramatically different and likely very controversial new model.

What is the Big Ten’s current revenue model?

The Big Ten had just over $928 million in total revenue and distributed about $63.2 million to each of the league’s dozen longest-standing members during the 2024 fiscal year, according to federal tax records.

That total is more than what schools received in the SEC. Records released in February showed that league distributed about $52.5 million in 2024 to every school except first-year members Oklahoma and Texas.

Looking ahead, the Big Ten’s per-school payout for 2025 is likely to be around $75 million for every member except for Oregon and Washington, whose shares are being phased in over seven years.

And these per-member payouts are expected to continue to grow. Wisconsin’s athletics department made a presentation to a university committee during the spring that projected just under $82.6 million in revenue during the 2026 fiscal year, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Would Big Ten members accept a new model?

No, they would not — or not happily, at least. Here’s where major differences stand out when looking at steps taken by the Mountain West and ACC.

The Big Ten is not hurting financially; the opposite is true, actually. There is no rancorous debate over buyout numbers or the league’s grant of rights deal, as was the case in the ACC. While the Buckeyes may claim otherwise, there is not one single team responsible for the Big Ten’s reputation and national draw, as Boise State successfully argued with the Mountain West.

Getting the Big Ten to make a seismic change in revenue distribution would require a cut in the annual revenue of the Buckeyes’ fellow members. Even if revenue is soaring, that would be very difficult for the rest of the conference to accept.

Would Michigan and Penn State be OK with taking money out of their pockets to send to Columbus? Would this arrangement be acceptable to schools such as Purdue, Rutgers, Maryland and others near the bottom of the Big Ten power structure?

This would clearly be an extremely difficult sell.

Does Ohio State really have bargaining power?

Ohio State is one of college sports’ elite brands, capable of moving the needle on any number of key topics in a manner unmatched by all but a few members of the NCAA.

But there is a very real question about the Buckeyes’ bargaining power in terms of truly pushing for an altered revenue model. The reason for that is simple: OSU has nowhere to go.

Florida State and Clemson were able to push the ACC into changes by essentially dangling the threat of leaving the conference. That was a real concern for the ACC, not only because of the potential loss of two flagship members but because schools such as Miami and North Carolina would almost certainly follow the Seminoles and Tigers out the door. The same fear does not exist in the Big Ten.

And FSU, Clemson and others could’ve knocked on the doors of the Big Ten or SEC offices. Ohio State is obviously not going to leave for the SEC. So should the Buckeyes push for more revenue and the Big Ten balks, where would they go? The NFC South?

The landscape-shifting fallout of an Ohio State move

Let’s say OSU is unable to sway the Big Ten. The school’s only real move would be to push for the creation of one or two super leagues, which would create the biggest shakeup to college football since the Division I split in 1978.

Again, the Buckeyes are one of only a few schools capable of officially putting this topic on the table.

They should find many Power Four schools willing to at least have the conversation. The top programs in the SEC could be persuaded by the possibility to add millions of dollars in annual revenue — as we’ve seen in recent years, just about every single move taken by schools and conferences has been driven by finances.

Likewise with high-profile Big Ten teams, who would push back at changing the league’s revenue structure but could be more willing to follow OSU into a super conference occupying the current Big Ten footprint.

This is the possible fallout that frightens the majority of NCAA members: After trying and failing to obtain more revenue than the rest of the Big Ten, Ohio State takes a drastic step that could create permanent change to college football.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he expects to have All-Star Game tweaks approved by the start of the 2025-26 regular season.
Silver confirmed that the NBA was looking at a structure he referred to as a ‘Ryder Cup-type format.’
The 2026 NBA All-Star Game will be played Sunday, Feb. 15 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

NEW YORK — Expect changes to the NBA All-Star Game to be formalized very soon.

After news emerged last week that the league had honed in on a round-robin tournament structure featuring domestic players against international ones, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday, Sept. 10 that he expects to have the tweaks approved by the start of the 2025-26 regular season on Oct. 21.

“The goal is to have the new format in place by the opening of the regular season,” Silver said upon the conclusion of the Board of Governors session at the St. Regis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. “I think there’s something to that, that once the season starts everyone should understand the rules of the road and what we’re looking at for All-Star this year. That would be our goal.”

Silver confirmed that the NBA was looking at a structure with a pair of teams featuring domestic players and one consisting of international stars, something he referred to as a “Ryder Cup-type format of U.S. against international,” alluding to the golf tournament. Each team will have eight players, and 12-minute quarter games will be played. He said the structure had been discussed with the Competition Committee, and that it was raised with the Board of Governors at the meetings this week.

This is a departure from the format at the 2025 All-Star Game in San Francisco, which saw a mini-tournament with four teams competing in three games. Silver has been outspoken about the format being “a miss.”

Silver also added that the NBA is working alongside the National Basketball Players Association and executive director Andre Iguodala to finalize the revised format.

“I think they have the same interest we do in having a more exciting and engaging All-Star,” Silver said. “None of us have shied away from acknowledging our disappointment of what we’ve seen on the floor the last few years. It’s an odd situation because it’s not just us and the Players Association, but even the players individually are acknowledging, ‘Yeah, this is not the best foot forward for the league.’ ”

Although the NBA is fully leaning into the U.S. versus World format, one of the four teams at last season’s event was comprised mostly of international superstars. That team, Chuck’s Global Stars, had players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama, though it also had domestic players like Donovan Mitchell and Trae Young.

The NBA is also looking to capitalize on the potential momentum of international competition, with the All-Star break coming right in the middle of the Winter Olympics, which will be held in Milan Cortina.

“I will say I’m hopeful,” Silver said. “I know I’ve stood up before all of you before and said, we fixed it, we got it, it’s going to work this year. So I don’t want to overpromise. But I feel pretty good about it.”

The 2026 All-Star Game will be played Sunday, Feb. 15 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, the home arena of the Los Angeles Clippers.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend the New York Yankees’ home game against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday, Sept. 11.

The Yankees are expected to hold a pregame ceremony to recognize the victims and heroes of 9/11.

The president has made appearances at several sporting events this year, including the US Open men’s tennis final on Sept. 7 and several UFC events.

His arrival caused an increased presence of Secret Service, who are usually at the scene of the event with dogs on hand before the president’s arrival.

The Yankees encourage anyone with a ticket for the game to arrive early because of the enhanced security measures around Yankee Stadium.

The stadium gates are scheduled to open at 4 p.m. ET, three hours before the scheduled first pitch.

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Notre Dame’s playoff chances are on the line in their upcoming game against Texas A&M after an opening loss to Miami.
Clemson faces a crucial game against Georgia Tech following a disappointing start to the season.
The matchup between No. 3 Georgia and No. 15 Tennessee will significantly shape the SEC championship race.

Ten wins seems like the magic number for the College Football Playoff, based on the first year of the expanded format. But while that’s a solid limbo bar to separate the cream of the crop in the Power Four from mere playoff contenders, the who, where and how of those wins matter.

No. 8 Notre Dame hosts No. 16 Texas A&M this weekend after losing 27-24 to No. 6 Miami in the season opener. Down the line, the Hurricanes could win the ACC and capture a top-four playoff seed, taking the sting out of that result for the Fighting Irish.

Think back to last season: Notre Dame survived an awful loss to Northern Illinois to make the playoff and advance all the way to the national championship game. Clearly, a single loss to Miami won’t sideline the Irish if they take care of business against a schedule that features only one additional opponent ranked in this week’s US LBM Coaches Poll in the Aggies.

Southern California might crack the Top 25 when the Trojans visit South Bend in October. Likewise with North Carolina State. By the time November comes around, Navy and Pittsburgh could be in the mix for national rankings. These same teams might also hover around bowl eligibility and do little to bolster Notre Dame’s credentials.

One loss in September is survivable against this schedule; two losses right out of the gate would paint an entirely different picture.

As they head into Saturday, the Irish have to embrace the reality of this matchup: Losing to A&M would deal a potentially devastating blow to Notre Dame’s playoff hopes — not a fatal blow, maybe, but one that would leave the defending national runner-up in a serious bind even with months to go before the playoff bracket is released in early December.

That puts the Irish under the spotlight as we look at the team, game, coach and quarterback facing the most pressure heading into Week 3 of the 2025 season

Team: No. 11 Clemson

It’s been a nightmarish two weeks for the preseason ACC favorites, with a disappointing loss to No. 4 LSU followed by an often ugly, tighter-than-expected win against Troy. And this feels like a continuation of a distressing trend: Clemson has now dropped three of five dating to last season.

Through these two games, the Tigers have scored just four touchdowns while ranking 120th in the Bowl Subdivision in yards per game and 95th in yards per play. Stumbling out of the gate has handed ACC front-runner status to the Hurricanes and raised another round of serious questions about this team’s viability as a championship contender.

You can pretty much write off the Tigers with a loss Saturday at Georgia Tech, which has started out with wins against Colorado and Gardner-Webb. A second defeat in three weeks would require Clemson to run the table from here to justify at-large playoff consideration and could demand an unblemished finish simply to reach the ACC championship game.

Game: No. 3 Georgia at No. 15 Tennessee

There’s still a sense of unknown circling around both teams, mostly because of the wins each has posted through two weeks: Georgia has beaten Marshall and Austin Peay, while Tennessee has topped Syracuse and East Tennessee State. The Volunteers have better looked the part, though, scoring a combined 117 points while averaging 605 yards per game, second best in the Bowl Subdivision.

Nasty weather and an extended pregame delay impacted how the Bulldogs looked in the win against Austin Peay. The offense is still adjusting to the tweaks in scheme and approach implemented to better suit new quarterback Gunnar Stockton. Overall, Georgia brought back seven starters, with four additional players with starting experience brought in through the transfer portal.

Some early-season struggles aren’t unexpected. And these hiccups might also be a byproduct of Georgia trying to hamper Tennessee’s ability to prepare by playing things closer to the vest against a pair of overmatched opponents.

The result in Knoxville will shape the direction of the SEC race. The Bulldogs can erase any doubt and give themselves room for error against a slate highlighted by No. 7 Texas, No. 13 Mississippi and No. 18 Alabama. The Volunteers can establish prime playoff positioning against a schedule that includes just two more ranked teams in the Crimson Tide and No. 16 Oklahoma.

Coach: Billy Napier, Florida

Napier is on borrowed time after the Gators’ 18-16 loss to South Florida, which included a botched three-and-out possession late in the fourth quarter that helped spark the Bulls’ massive upset.

His overall record speaks for itself: Napier is 20-20 in three-plus seasons at Florida, giving him the lowest winning percentage of any coach with at least 30 games of experience at Florida during the modern era. Last weekend’s loss was the program’s first at home against a school from Florida other than Florida State or Miami since Stetson in 1938.

Given the Gators’ schedule, the odds of Napier returning for another year are nearly infinitesimal. The gauntlet of eight matchups against teams in this week’s Coaches Poll starts on Saturday night at LSU, which is close to a must-win game any Power Four coach will face in September.

The Gators have dropped six of seven in Baton Rouge and haven’t won two in a row in this rivalry since 2008-9.

Quarterback: Arch Manning, Texas

No FBS quarterback is becoming more familiar with wall-to-wall scrutiny. While not unexpected – his name, his reputation, the fact that he’s the starter at Texas all play a role — the parsing of every Manning throw is vastly greater than the attention heaped on any other player in the FBS.

He accounted for five scores in last week’s win against San Jose State, a big uptick in production from the opener against No. 1 Ohio State. But Manning was still under fire for things seemingly as innocuous as his grimace after misfiring a sidearm throw against the Spartans. (Steve Sarkisian said this week that Manning “doesn’t have any” injuries.)

The SJSU win still progress for the first-year starter. He’ll have to continue that improvement in what should be another rout, this time against Texas-El Paso. The Miners allowed 233 yards on 8.3 yards per attempt in a loss to Utah State and then gave up 295 yards on 8.2 yards per throw in last Saturday’s win against Tennessee-Martin.