CFB Week 9 Friday
- Kyle Kirms
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
NORTH TEXAS @ CHARLOTTE - 7 PM
Well North Texas silenced the critics pretty quickly. They had the huge primetime game against South Florida. Everyone saw South Florida beat em comfortably on their homefield. There was a lot of talk... "North Texas hasn't played anybody", etc. Well they silenced em quickly. Cuz UTSA is not a bad football team and they absolutely smoked em.
Now they go out on the road for actually just the 2nd time this year and I gotta say... as domimant as North Texas has been at home, both their road games were a bit sweaty.
Good news for North Texas... Charlotte's a very bad football team.
There's nothing on paper that indicates Charlotte is capable of stopping North Texas' offense. Charlotte doesn't have a pass rush... Mestemaker's been a beast when given a clean pocket. WR Miles Coleman is most like returning for North Texas. He missed last week. They did lose their starting RT last week Jimto Obidegwu. But he was injured earlier in the year also. He's actually only played 3 games all season.
Temple just hung 49 on Charlotte. They got players back from injury for this one. DT Jamarrion Solomon came back for this game. LB Shay Taylor also returned from injury for this one. Didn't seem to matter.
South Florida hung 54 on these guys.
On the other side, this is where we maybe could possibly find some angles on Charlotte. This North Texas defense is better than last year's but it's still not a great defense. The problem is... we don't even know who Charlotte's QB is anymore. QB Conner Harrell is out for the season. WR E. Jai Mason got injured in the Army game a couple weeks ago and it looks like he's out. This offensive line is also crushed. They were already missing a couple from early in the season.. then their starting C Jonny King got hurt also. (both questionable).
Charlotte's offense has done basically nothing since getting into conference play.
If you're looking to take the big number with Charlotte, you could say it's a big look-ahead spot for North Texas. They've got a HUGE game against Navy next week... biggest game of the year.
They don't have Tulane on the schedule... and because they took that loss to South Florida, their only chance of playing in the AAC Championship game is to beat Navy and hope Memphis beats Tulane in a couple weeks.
I think North Texas rolls. Charlotte was actually able to score points in the South Florida game... supposed to be a nice night in Charlotte. Gimme the over at 60.5.
CAL @ VIRGINIA TECH - 7:30 PM
This Virginia Tech numbers against the pass are absolutely terrible... and this is a Cal offense that can only throw the ball. They have no ruin game at all. Their RB2 and RB3 are injured. They didn't even have a run game with Jadyn Ott last year.
I gotta say... I cannot figure these data points for Virginia Tech's defense out. So they got absolutely smoked through the air in the first 3 games by South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Old Dominion. Then Brent Fry gets fired... they actually string together a few good defensive games in a row. Now one was against Wofford, another was against Wake Forest... but after Brent Pry got fired, it looks like the defense had a little surge there.
And then it came crashing down... Week 7, they go on the road to Georgia Tech... the defense didn't play well at all. S Quentin Reddish is out for the year but that's not new. LB Jaden Keller is one of the team's leading tacklers and he's listed as questionable.
The Cal offense has definitely struggled... the last time we saw Sagapolutele have a good game throwing the ball was actually the last time they went out on the road. He played pretty well against Boston College.
On the other side of the ball, Cal's defense is probably the strongest unit in this game or at least, on paper so far, it is.
Virginia Tech's offense actually hasn't played badly at all. They've run the ball really well in their last few games. These aren't exactly strong defenses though.
We do have to point out that Cal's been getting run on though... which is surprising because Wilcox is a great defensive coach and they had such a strong run defense last year. I personally think he'll sure this up... but these numbers are pretty ugly.
I have faith in Wilcox to get his team up for this one. I think that North Carolina was a nice wakeup call for them. They've only got 1 conference loss... this Cal team is in the mix.
And we've seen this team get up for these cross country conference games. Look at their last 4 trips to the east coast. Wilcox has gotten this team up for these games.
I'm on Cal but I got a bad number. +4.5.
BOISE STATE @ NEVADA - 10 PM
This Nevada offense is so next-level bad. Boise just lost S Zion Washington. He's not out for the season but he has been ruled out for this one. Not sure it matters.
This Nevada offense just can't do anything. They made a QB change over to Freshman Carter Jones and the here are the offensive numbers since we've seen that switch. I don't think Chubba Purdy is hurt... pretty sure he just got benched. They've been missing their top 2 WRs Jordan Brown and Marcus Bellon. They've also been missing starting LG Hadine Diaby. All 3 of those guys are listed as questionable so maybe if they come back... I'm really not sure.
On the other side of the ball, I don't think it's crazy to say Nevada can make some stops here. Jeff Choate is a good head coach and he's a defensive guy. They've also go Kane Ioane at DC who actually was Boise State's DC under Spencer Danielson in 2023. So I think they can cook something up to slow this offense down.
And let's not forget that Boise State's offense has had some problems. Sure they lit up UNLV's terrible defense at home... but they were not consistently moving the chains in the previous 3 games.
This Nevada defense has done one thing extremely well this year... limit explosive plays. Boise State has lived on explosive plays.
I think Nevada can make Boise's offense work for it. Neither team runs a past face... both teams run the ball a fair amount.
