Clay Helton Doesn’t Make it to South Bend:
USC travels across the country to face the Irish on October 12th, but Clay Helton will not be the head man in charge. The Trojans will have a tough time winning more than two games out of its first five matchups. After a grueling stretch of Fresno State, Stanford, @BYU, Utah, and @Washington they roll into a bye week before Notre Dame. This would be the perfect time to give the interim coach two weeks to prepare for taking over. The sooner the Trojans make the move of moving on from Helton they can see what Graham Harrell has to offer as an interim head coach but more importantly plenty of time to try and court Urban Meyer. Who will be working closely with two former USC players on the FOX Pregame with Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush.
Army Will Have a 12 -win Regular Season
Outside of traveling to Ann Arbor the 2nd week of the season, all games on Army’s schedule are incredibly winnable. They travel across the country to take on Hawaii on December 1st, but they will be coming off of facing VMI then a bye week to prepare for the travel. The Black Knights play 13 regular-season games and could easily come out of that 12-1 with their only loss being at Michigan. Phil Steele rates Army’s schedule as the 128th hardest in the country. Army’s opponents combined for a 33% winning percentage in 2018.
Kentucky Going to Kentucky:
After a once in a lifetime season for the Wildcats, they are going to come back to reality. Kentucky lost some generational talents for them. Losing Benny Snell, Josh Allen, and Lonnie Johnson Jr. will be too difficult to overcome. I have a tough time seeing the Wildcats win more than six games. They do have an incredibly soft out of conference schedule that will allow them to pile up some early wins. They face off against Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Tennessee-Martin, and Louisville in the non-conference portion of there schedule. Toledo and Eastern Michigan aren’t exactly gimme games though, Kentucky should be able to win both games, but they will have to show up to do so they can’t sleepwalk through those games. Outside of Arkansas and Vanderbilt, the remaining conference schedule will be tough sliding for the Wildcats.
Virginia Tech to Win the ACC Coastal Division:
Can’t say that I am a huge fan of the Hokies talent on their team, but they face an incredibly weak schedule – one of the weakest among Power 5 schools. Only Nebraska and Miami (FL) have weaker Power 5 schedules. The Hokies do have three tough road games. They have to travel to Miami (FL), Notre Dame, and Virginia. The Hokies have the potential to roll into South Bend to face the Irish as a 7-0 or 6-1 team. If Virginia Tech can stay focused and doesn’t have the off the field issues of the past few seasons they can easily finish the ACC slate with one loss or two at the most.
