The games might not have been great and teams may have looked sloppy due to an unusual off-season, but it sure felt great to have a Saturday filled with college football again. And this week, two of the Power Five conferences kick off their seasons.
Atlantic Coast Conference
As the title would suggest, Trevor Lawrence and Clemson kick off their 2021 campaign. They take on a Wake Forest team as 33-point favorites despite being the road team. Because of this projected outcome, you can expect that the major fantasy prospects will be out at halftime. Besides Lawrence and Travis Etienne, who both enter the year as clear cut first-round picks, the players to watch for Clemson are sophomore wide receivers Joseph Ngata and Frank Ladson Jr. The injury to Justyn Ross and draft entry of Tee Higgins opens up plenty of opportunity for both to establish themselves as top devy prospects. And if this game goes as expected, keep an eye on freshman QB D.J. Uiagalelei in mop-up duty. He’s projected as the next great starting QB. For Wake Forest, there aren’t any standout prospects to watch with Sage Surratt opting out of the year, but sophomore RB Kenneth Walker could be a player to watch moving forward.
The other household-name QB in the ACC comes from North Carolina, who kicks off their season at home against Syracuse. Sam Howell put together an impressive enough freshman season that he’s being projected as one of the top QB picks in the class of 2022. Alongside Howell are two lesser discussed WRs, but they’ll likely be on everyone’s radar by the end of the year. Dyami Brown and Dazz Newsome combined for 2,052 receiving yards and 22 TDs in 2019, and they did so in an entertaining fashion.
Dyami Brown took one look at future first round cornerback A.J. Terrell in C3 and told his quarterback "this dude's got no chance, throw me the damn ball" pic.twitter.com/PLePGGMoef
— Trevor Sikkema (@TampaBayTre) July 8, 2020
If you haven’t had a chance to watch Tutu Atwell play football, you should tune into the Louisville/Western Kentucky matchup on Saturday night. Atwell won’t impress you with his physique, but he dominated the offense in 2019.