CFB DeptHITS: Saturday, September 28

A few updates on key injuries included in this pre-week five Saturday edition of the hits. Also, we'll preview our full-on Model update post later on this morning.

Sep 28, 2024

We make hundreds of tweaks, edits and adjustments to the 134 live depth charts over at CFBDepth.com — these are the “big” ones that you’ll want to know before you make any decisions for week five:

Washington ::: DL Jayvon Parker was clearly injured in the week five game against Rutgers. He was helped off the field. Adding to the injury tracker.

Further: We do our best to track in-game injuries based on our well-curated list of follows on X and/or just watching games. We’ll throw them on our “Injury & Status” report and track leading up to the next week. Unfortunately, we saw one last night with Jayvon Parker. This loss could impact their depth on the defensive line.

Fresno State ::: Barkboard keeping us up on everything Fresno State as usual. The biggest of this injury post is that RB Malik Sherrod is not on there and it appears he's ready to roll for week five.

Further: Good news for the Bulldogs here as this room can use another body. However, it is worth noting that Elijah Gilliam has done a nice job spelling Sherrod and there is a nice buzz around true freshman Bryson Donelson as well. This room is well stocked, but like most, it’s better off with all the pieces in play.

Florida International ::: WR Juju Lewis suffered a right knee injury and will miss the rest of the season for the Panthers.

Further: Never fun to see this. Lewis had just seven targets on the season, but he did grab five of them turned two into touchdowns. Lewis is a former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket and has two full years of eligibility beyond this season. He’ll likely seek out a medical redshirt and have three left.

San Diego State ::: QB Danny O'Neil will make his return from injury in week five to lead the Aztecs' struggling offense.

Further: One of the surprise/disappointments of the early returns from the college football season is this Aztecs offense. Sean Lewis is supposed to be an offensive guru and maybe he just doesn’t have the toys to get it all in motion, but we do need to see some major improvements. O’Neil is a true freshman who won the starting job out of camp - somewhat surprisingly - but was banged up in week two against a very physical Oregon State team and was not able to play in the loss to Cal. After a bye week, we’ll see if things get back on track for this offense as they get their “guy” back under center taking on Central Michigan and their “not so good” defense.

Boston College ::: QB Thomas Castellanos will sit week five and give way to Grayson James as the starter. James was banged up to start the season but is clearly ready to take the reins.

Further: Not ideal for Bill O’Brien and the Eagles. James is not the same type of player as Castellanos and this will cause a need for a slight change in philosophy. We may see them try to establish the run against a WKU defense that is not likely to a whole lot in the way of shutting down many/any offenses. This is probably the best week to have this happen and Castellanos is not expected out long-term.

Auburn ::: QB Payton Thorne is back under center for the Tigers after a really poor performance from freshman Hank Brown last week.

Further: Hugh Freeze’s handling of this quarterback situation - really the quarterback situation as a whole since his arrival - is, well, surprising. This is his thing. He knows talent at this position and has historically been able to get the most out of it. Maybe these just aren’t the guys. Freshman Hank Brown was really bad against Arkansas and essentially handed them the game (though, that was a team effort). Going back to Thorne forces Freeze to admit his mistakes and get prepped for a really good Oklahoma defense today.

Game cancellation: The Liberty-Appalachian State game week five has been cancelled due to Hurricane Helene. It will not be rescheduled.

|||||| (CFBDm) Model v2 Update

Big updates to the Model occurred in the week leading up to this week five. Early returns for week five has it at 3-3-0 (+3 UNITS) with the three game spread plays hitting and the totals all missing. We will detail it out more in our later, full-on Model post, but we wanted to give a little preview of what’s to come there.

PLAYER RATINGS UPDATE ::: The player ratings fuel the ratings/rankings that are produced as we put in playing time projections for every player in the FBS. Simply put, any tweaks to our player ratings are going to affect what the simulation model produces. We made a pretty big one, putting more weight on the current season player ratings that goes into each rating on a 20-point scale. This is an attempt to allow the Model to “catch up” quicker to what we are seeing on the field, without ignoring the talent-level and upside that each player, and subsequently, each positional unit and eventually each team, really has.

UNIT PLAYS ::: We are going to now score every game that the Model projects out to get a better idea of how it is performing. We were just tracking the “plays,” which is anything that the Model produces a +/- 5 points on either the spread or the total. We still go on a 5-point scale, but we won’t see many (really any) 5-pointers the way we have it set up. Army was a 3-point play on Thursday. The Model has three more 3-point plays for Saturday (which we’ll reveal in the post).

We will put out our Saturday Model Plays article about 90 minutes before the first kickoff and we hope you check that out and join along for the ride as we try to build the best performing data-driven Model on the planet. Here is a preview of what we will be producing for subs: