Editor’s note: Each week, this column will take a look at emerging trends throughout college football and how we can utilize those in the markets. The goal will be to look at things like player usage and team trends. How is Team X using certain personnel? How is Team Y performing in this specific area? 

Let’s dive in.

Miller Moss might just be awesome

The Trojans’ redshirt junior quarterback has started 2 games in his career at USC. Both of them have come away from home in neutral-site venues. Both of them have come against teams ranked inside the AP top 15. Both of them have resulted in wins. In those 2 games, Moss has completed 50 of his 69 passes for 750 yards and 7 touchdowns with just 1 interception. He’s a 72% passer with a 10.9 yards-per-play clip.

This was my favorite throw from USC’s 27-20 win over LSU on Sunday, which also happened to be the most important throw of the night.

Moss being a real star at quarterback for the Trojans impacts the ceiling. The defense was far from perfect against LSU but it also didn’t feature those head-scratching plays that burned the Trojans in the past.

Facing Utah State and quarterback Bryson Barnes in Week 2, I like USC’s chances to put up points. If Barnes turns the ball over — like he did 11 times last year — Moss will have short fields to work with. FanDuel has USC’s point total in the game at 45.5, and I like the over (-111).

Cade Klubnik might not be the problem, which is horrifying for Clemson

The Tigers had 11 possessions without an offensive touchdown and didn’t cross the 50 until the third quarter. The problems with Clemson don’t just rest at the feet of the quarterback. Receivers dropped passes. Penalties short-circuited drives. Missed assignments happened. And the designs are a mess. Still, the former 5-star quarterback didn’t help.

Clemson’s QB had a 40.8 QBR in the opening loss to Georgia. Klubnik closed out last season with a 25.9 QBR in the bowl win over Kentucky. And he had a 31.2 QBR in the 16-7 win over South Carolina to end the regular season. There doesn’t seem to be any confidence in his game at the moment. The Tigers knew all offseason they had to make explosives part of their offense or they wouldn’t grow, and yet this was Klubnik’s shot chart in the opener.

Clemson is a 17.5-point favorite against Appalachian State at home in Week 2 (ESPN Bet) and I love the Mountaineers at that number. They have a quarterback who can put points on the board and a secondary that gave up next to nothing outside the hashes in the pass game. Turnovers weren’t a back-breaking issue against Georgia, but they could make this game uncomfortable if Klubnik is funneled into the middle of the field.

Be it the route combinations, the receivers, or some mixture of both, Clemson’s receivers aren’t beating their man to get open. If Klubnik is firing 50/50 balls over the middle of the field, Clemson will get burned.

Miami’s path to the ACC title looks wide open

If you put a ticket on Miami to make the College Football Playoff in the preseason, good on you. That value is only going to continue to soar. The Hurricanes have minus odds to make the CFP at multiple major sportsbooks after just 1 week. The U has even odds to make the CFP at ESPN Bet and is +100 at FanDuel.

After a 41-17 win over Florida in its opener, Miami looks to have an inside track to the CFP because the ACC looks remarkably weak.

The Canes open ACC play against Virginia Tech at home. The Hokies lost their opener to Vanderbilt. Florida State is 0-2 to start the year. Clemson isn’t on the schedule, though that might not have been a bad thing even if it was. The toughest games now look like Louisville on Oct. 19 and Georgia Tech on Nov. 9 — both on the road. The Louisville game comes off a bye week, and we need to wait on Georgia Tech given FSU’s deficiencies.

FPI now projects 10 wins for Miami and gives the Canes a 25.7% chance to win the ACC. The only other real challenger is Louisville.

Tetairoa McMillan is the best receiver in the country

In a 61-39 win over New Mexico, the junior receiver caught a program-record-tying 4 touchdowns and went for a program-record 304 yards through the air. It was the fifth consecutive game with at least 100 receiving yards for McMillan.

He drew 15 targets. New coach Brent Brennan put the big-bodied McMillan outside for most of the game but also ran him out of the slot for 9 snaps. He drew 5 contested targets and an average depth of 17.6 yards on his overall targets.

No other Arizona player had more than 3 targets in the game. With Jacob Cowing moving on, McMillan taking an even larger role in the offense felt likely, but if he’s going to enjoy that kind of target share, he’ll pile up the accolades later this year.

FanDuel is currently letting fans bet on McMillan’s season receiving yardage total. The prop is set at 1,240.5, and the over has -114 odds. McMillan had 1,402 yards last season while sharing targets with an 848-yard receiver (Cowing). In that receiver’s absence, he’s already a third of the way to that 1,240 number. This shouldn’t be on the board much longer.

Is Vanderbilt’s Week 1 win more about Vandy or Virginia Tech?

It took overtime to get the win, but Vanderbilt opened Year 3 under Clark Lea with a massive 34-27 victory over the Hokies. A couple of things stand out. First, Virginia Tech outgained the Commodores in the game while running an equal number of plays. Second, Virginia Tech outgained the Commodores on a per-play basis by nearly half a yard. Third, Vanderbilt had a postgame win expectancy of nearly 76%, per Bill Connelly’s SP+.

Quarterback Diego Pavia was Vanderbilt’s leading rusher, with 26 attempts. Virginia Tech was completely incapable of running the football or protecting quarterback Kyron Drones, who was sacked 4 times.

Marshall was uber-efficient in a 45-3 win over Stony Brook in its opener, ranking in the 94th percentile with a 54% success rate. The Thundering Herd will tell us if Virginia Tech’s defensive issues are real or not. The Hokies are a 20-point favorite at DraftKings but Connelly’s SP+ views an 11-point VaTech win.

Florida’s offensive line has a hole

There are 799 offensive linemen who have seen at least 20 snaps through Week 1 of the college football season. Four of them earned 0.0 grades from Pro Football Focus as a pass blocker. Florida’s starting right tackle, Kamryn Waites was 1 of the 4.

Waites was a major weak point on the line for Florida, allowing 4 quarterback pressures. Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson split time at the spot and had his own warts.

Quarterback Graham Mertz was knocked out of the game against Miami with what was later revealed to be a concussion, putting his status for Saturday against Samford in jeopardy. How the right side of that offensive line looks in Week 2 will inform how to play Florida’s Week 3 matchup against Texas A&M.

The Gators will host A&M with either a true freshman quarterback starting for them or a guy coming back from a concussion. Notre Dame won its opener against the Aggies, but A&M’s defense held up for much of the game and posted a 14% havoc rate. The Aggies will likely be favored. The question will be by how much?

Iowa’s first half vs. Iowa’s second half

Iowa’s opener against Illinois State was hilarious. The Hawkeyes scored 6 points and averaged 4 yards per play in the first half. They scored 34 points and averaged 10.1 yards per play in the second half. Quarterback Cade McNamara went 8-for-17 in the first half and then hit 13 of his 14 passes (with 3 scores) in the second half. McNamara! The guy who made headlines for a preseason scrimmage during which he completed 8 of his 24 passes for 20 yards and a pick.

That guy made this play happen in the second half:

McNamara went 8-for-10 on passes beyond 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. Two of his touchdown throws came on downfield attempts. When he was kept clean, he was excellent. Illinois State tried to blitz him all day and it wasn’t really ever able to get home.

Iowa finished with 492 yards of offense — the most in a game for the program since 2019. New offensive coordinator Tim Lester had a nice day, though it took a half to really get into a rhythm.

The Hawkeyes host Iowa State in Week 2, and they’re a 2.5-point favorite at ESPN Bet. Sagarin ratings would have this as a 3-point game on a neutral field. Bill Connelly’s SP+ says this will be a 7.8-point Iowa win. Neither of those models are going to react too much to how Iowa looks and we have the bias of knowing what Iowa looked like a year ago.

Iowa has won 7 of 8 in this series, with 5 of those 7 wins coming by at least 7 points. I like the Hawkeyes at 2.5.

Early conference action to target

In the last dozen seasons, 8 teams have been a double-digit favorite in a conference game after opening their season against an FCS opponent. Those teams are 1-7 against the spread in those games. (H/T VSiN’s Steve Makinen for the nugget.) In Week 2, we have 3 games that qualify for this category.

Navy hosts Temple as a 13-point favorite. Liberty plays New Mexico State as a 21.5-point favorite on the road. And Utah hosts Baylor as a 14-point favorite. (Technically, the Utah-Baylor game won’t be scored as a conference game in the Big 12. It’s the second half of a home-and-home that was scheduled prior to Utah joining the league.)

Liberty was in a 17-10 game with Campbell at halftime in its opener. Back-to-back touchdown runs midway through the fourth quarter helped Liberty seal the game. Now, they face a very one-dimensional NMSU offense on the road. But the Aggies controlled the line of scrimmage well and fared well in the red zone.

This was a 16-point game last season at home and a 14-point game in the CUSA title game. Liberty was also a 15-point favorite or more in 4 games last season and went 0-4 ATS in those games.

Nebraska’s offense is… scary?

Dylan Raiola was only pressured on 6 of his 29 dropbacks against UTEP in a 40-7 win. Nebraska’s other quarterbacks were pressured once on 9 combined dropbacks. Nebraska’s first-team interior linemen (Micah Mazzccua, Ben Scott, Justin Evans-Jenkins) all had pass-blocking grades of 83.1 or better in the opener, per PFF. Tackles Bryce Benhart and Turner Corcoran were fine.

Two reps from Saturday’s game that stood out. The first:

And the second:

UTEP brought 4 and 3 rushers in the above clips. The Miners shouldn’t be reaching the Nebraska quarterback with a 3-man rush. But a true freshman quarterback beating 8-man coverage in his first collegiate start is noteworthy. Railoa largely backed up the hype; he clearly has the talent. If he’s going to have clean pockets from which to throw, Nebraska is going to be dangerous against most teams.

Tennessee has an unbelievable quarterback

Nico Iamaleava was phenomenal in his 2024 debut. He completed 22 of his 28 pass attempts for 314 yards and 3 scores in just 1 half of work. Every single pass was where it needed to be. Every single pass was a laser. When I wrote about this guy as an upside Heisman play in March, he was +2500 to win the Heisman Trophy. Today, he is +1200 (DraftKings). It’ll get shorter after the Vols beat a top-25 NC State team on Saturday.

Now, Chattanooga didn’t challenge Iamaleava the way NC State will with coverages, but Iamaleava’s arm talent was outstanding.

I loved this breakdown from Aaron Murray on what was 1 of Iamaleava’s best throws.

Tennessee has games against Alabama and Georgia. There’s the rivalry clash with Florida. There’s a game in Norman against Oklahoma on Sept. 21 that will have a massive amount of attention on it. Iamaleava is going to have plenty of opportunities to wow the public. If this team — which is plenty talented around the QB spot — gets Hendon Hooker-like play from Iamaleava, add another contender to the list in the SEC.

Washington’s offense will be fine

With Kalen DeBoer leaving Seattle and Jedd Fisch taking up residence on Montlake, the offseason brought a tidal wave of change for the Washington offense. All 11 starters left the program. There was a high degree of intrigue over what this UW offense would look like in its opening game.

Tailback Jonah Coleman stole the show. The Arizona import ran for 127 yards and 3 touchdowns on 16 carries. He averaged 7.7 yards per touch. He was the third-highest-graded running back in the country in Week 1 for PFF and forced ten missed tackles. Ten! On 18 touches!

When you watch the clip below, keep in mind that Coleman is listed at 5-foot-9, 229 pounds on the official UW roster.

Throughout his career thus far, Coleman has often been compared to Maurice Jones-Drew. It’s a compliment and a fair comparison. Both are bowling balls. Expect another big day against an Eastern Michigan front that struggles to defend the run.

South Carolina has another young pup

In Nyck Harbor, South Carolina has a world-class speedster with a forward’s build and the Gamecocks are trying to figure out how best to utilize him. They have another such problem on the defensive side of the football.

Dylan Stewart is a 6-foot-6, 248-pound freshman edge from the D.C. area. He was a 5-star recruit, so seeing him on the field in South Carolina’s opener didn’t take anyone by surprise, but seeing him move the way he did was still somewhat jarring.

He got to the quarterback so fast in that first rep you can actually see his brain buffering while he processes what he’s supposed to do next. That’s what coaches mean when they use the phrase “twitchy.”

Stewart finished the day with 1.5 sacks and 2 forced fumbles. As he gets strong, he’s going to become a serious problem. I’m looking forward to seeing how he develops throughout the season.