It's Game Week (9-8-20)

It is a Tuesday drive.

We hope you enjoyed a healthy and safe Labor Day weekend. But it's officially game week for the ACC. And we're less than five days away from the Panthers season opener. And as crazy as it sounds, I think reality is already starting to set in on Carolina. Because on paper, I have no clue how the Panthers are going to stop the Las Vegas Raiders.

Sunday, one o'clock at Bank of America Stadium. We learned yesterday Eli Apple was going to be put on IR, which means he's going to miss at least the first three weeks of the season. Then I look at the depth chart and there are no reinforcements at safety behind Justin Burris and Trey Boston. See Trey Boston's from Carolina. Burris, he's an NC State grad. The only other safety listed on the roster is rookie Jeremy Chin. And as we've learned over the last few weeks, Chin is likely to start at a place not named safety. He's competing at outside linebacker with Jermaine Carter. So if something were to happen to Boston or Burris, I don't know who's going to be playing at safety. Across from Dante Jackson, it's likely going to be Troy Pride Jr., who I happen to like a lot coming out of Notre Dame. But with no OTAs and no preseason games, you're talking about a fourth round draft pick stepping in there and competing against the Las Vegas Raiders right out of the gate.

That's a lot to ask. Russell Douglas. He was picked up by Carolina yesterday. I asked Marty Hurney about him when we caught up with the Panthers GM a short while ago. And this is how he describes Russell. Russell Douglas adds size and experience to us.

He started what I think 16 some games in in this league over the last three years. And we you know, he's a guy that we had our eye on that if he was released, we would claim and we got him. So, you know, that's an area that you're always we've been looking at to improve. But I think we'll just see.

We'll see how it comes along. So Russell Douglas, he started a handful of games for the Philadelphia Eagles the last few years. So with Eli Apple out, Carolina is relying on a guy who will have less than a week of calling himself a Carolina Panther playing across from Eli Apple and a guy who's never played at NFL Snap because there's no preseason ball. That's who they're relying on to go up against the Raiders team has a lot of firepower at wide receiver. They drafted Brian Edwards who you might remember at South Carolina. The first round pick is the speedster Henry Ruggs out of Alabama. Zay Jones. He a pirate.

Nelson Aguilar. They're on the roster. And Robert, I think Derek Carr doesn't get enough credit. When you look at the stats, I think you'd be surprised to learn that last year he threw for over 4000 yards, 21 touchdowns to 8 picks, and he was 70% completion percentage. That's pretty damn good. I don't know how Carolina is going to be getting stops on Sunday.

I just don't see how and I'm making assumptions. Carolina is going to be better against the run. Luke Kuechly, he's not around anymore. He's as good of a run stopper you're going to find in the line backing core.

Shaq Thompson, he has a big load to carry. Carolina was fourth worst in the league against the run. If Josh Jacobs gets what he wants, this is no contest. The Raiders are going to win big. But I'm making an assumption Carolina is going to be better in that spot because we kind of understated how important KK Short is in the middle of that defensive line.

And they also picked up Derek Brown in the draft. I think Carolina is going to be better against the run. I'm more concerned what they do in passing situations. My biggest concern, it's not really even down the field with Ruggs and Edwards who have just as much experience or lack thereof, Troy Pride Jr. does quite frankly. I'm more concerned about the flats and over the middle of the field. Carolina, they're going to put either Jermaine Carter or Jeremy Chin in the line backing core. Which means if I'm Jon Gruden, if I'm offensive coordinator Greg Olsen, I'm attacking that all day with Waller and Jason Witten. Because I have no faith they can guard those guys.

I have no faith they can cover. We haven't seen it yet. And those are two pretty good tight ends to have catching the ball for a guy who's already a 4,000 yard passer from last year. An MVP candidate from three years ago. You have Korn Elder listed as your starting nickel. I think Hunter Renfro eats him up all day and tomorrow. It's not a good situation Carolina is looking at defensively. So if Carolina is to start the mat rule era on the right foot, I think the only way they win is in a shootout. I'm looking at the over under 47 and a half. That's the total. 47 and a half.

Usually the total floats around 43 and a half, 44 and a half for normal games. There's going to be a lot of scoring in this time. If Carolina plans to compete, they need to score a lot of points and they need to capitalize on the fact nobody knows what they're going to look like. It's one of the more difficult scouts across the NFL this weekend trying to figure out what Joe Brady's going to do.

Because how much do you base on LSU when Joe, he called plays in the red zone, he called third down and he was the passing game coordinator. So what can you expect from the run? How much does Matt rule and his principles weigh in on the offense? How much of it is Saints based?

What is it going to be? None of us really know. How are they going to use Curtis Samuel? They're protecting that information like it's the nuclear codes and they should because that's really their only shot out of the gate here to score a lot of points because the Raiders have no clue where they're going to line up or what they're going to look like. Phil Snow's defense the same way.

We just don't know. So Carolina, they have the element of surprise on their end. They're at home. It's a West Coast team traveling east. Not as much worried about that for a season opener, but that is the only way Carolina wins this game. I think Carolina, if they want to win, they need to score 30 points. That's where I'm at. Your thoughts are welcome. What do you make of the Panthers Raiders opener?

336-777-1600. The phone number on Twitter at sportsubtribe if you want to chime in that way. Cam Newton was rarely, I mean, he's rarely introspective and he's also rarely doing sports talk radio. But this morning he seems to have gotten the weekly Tom Brady time slot that WEEI has secured over the last 10 years or so. And based from what I've heard him say and Bill Belichick and reading reports out of Foxboro, it sounds like Cam Newton has taken great strides personally and finally matured and become self-aware. Maturity and self-awareness, those are not two traits I'd associate Cam with and his time in Charlotte. He wasn't really mature and that was best characterized by how high he got on the field, dabbing, celebrating the Superman and all that, and how low he got after losses. You lose early on Cam Newton, he would groan in the press conferences, he would roll his eyes after the Super Bowl, which is the high point in terms of your platform, the biggest stage you're on, you walk out of it after five minutes, you're wearing the hoodie, a lot of people still remember Cam from that. He lacked self-awareness when making that joke to Jordan Rodriguez, her simply asking about running routes.

He didn't apologize in the way he should have. That happens with growth. Cam Newton has grown because he has to in order to have success in New England. He's named a captain, something that didn't happen with Randy Moss in his first year with the Patriots, and you can fill in the blank for a lot of other Patriot newcomers. Mike Reese, who's covered the Patriots for a very long time, said that Cam's the first newcomer he can remember named a captain for the Patriots.

That happens because of hard work. Belichick, he gushed about Cam, but this is the part I found most interesting. Cam, he understands what he represents in the sport, which is quite a bit. When he came into the league, he noted the only black quarterbacks alongside me were Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb.

Those were the two, and they carried themselves a lot differently than the way I plan to carry myself. Cam being bombastic with the suits and the style and the flair. Anybody who spent time in Atlanta knows what that's all about, but we haven't seen that at the quarterback position in the NFL. Bill Voth, who works with panthers.com, he covered Cam at many different capacities. He shared with us once he left a conversation he had with Cam where Cam said he's always going to be criticized. He's always going to receive it, but he's proud that he has opened the door for other quarterbacks to be openly black while playing quarterback. Carrying themselves, having fun in a way that nobody else really has the way that Cam has done so the last decade. So I think it was Jermaine Wiggins, a former Panther asking Cam on WEEI why he thinks it is he is seen as this quarterback who can't gel with Bill Belichick and it wasn't going to work.

Cam really made it real, really fast. Honestly, we've gone honest. Because I'm a black athlete, a quarterback that for a long time I've been unapologetic is because I have carried myself in a way that the media hasn't gave me my just due.

But yet at the same time I do understand that and I don't have no type of resentment towards that. He's also helped shed the quarterback prototype, really in the last decade. We don't think about whether or not a quarterback is black anymore.

We don't, do we? When you look at the top quarterbacks in the sport last year. Yeah, it's Patrick Mahomes who won the Super Bowl and Deshaun Watson who got this massive contract over the weekend. Russell Wilson seemed to be the second best quarterback in the sport. Lamar Jackson won the MVP. These are now things that we just don't think about.

We don't think about him anymore. Cam, when he came into the league, it was still something people discussed. Cam was, I think, just the second black quarterback to ever win the MVP before we've seen it the last two years. So this quarterback prototype mold, whatever you want to call it, it no longer exists in the NFL and that's something Cam's proud of. I do believe that, you know, for me, when I came into the league, it was almost expected for you to act a certain way, talk a certain way, prepare a certain type of way, practice a certain type of way, play the game a certain type of way.

And then for me now to see where the league is at now, you know, it makes me smile because there's many different ways you can run football games and you can do it either by throwing or by running. When you look at just even five years ago, talking about the draft, I don't know, maybe we make it 10 years, 10 years ago. I don't know if Baker Mayfield is a top two round draft pick in 2010. It took watching shorter quarterbacks, Drew Brees win a Super Bowl, Russell Wilson have the success he's having to kind of eliminate that stereotype. The same thing for Kyler Murray. The prototype back then, it was 6-2, rocket arm, didn't really have to be in runner.

In fact, it's better if you're not. That's now changed. And Cam Newton played a role in it. And I'm glad he's no longer uncomfortable telling people how he feels about race. The week before the Super Bowl, he made a comment that he gets a lot of attention because people have never seen a quarterback that looks like me. He received a ton of backlash to the point where he said in GQ magazine the following year, I'm not going to talk about issues of race.

And he didn't. Well, it seems he's now comfortable in doing so. And I'm glad to see it because I feel like he has a lot to contribute to the conversation.

But here's the last clip I want to play from Cam. This is the thing that doesn't get talked about enough with him. This is the thing that I think national media misses. And even Panther detractors, Panther fans who didn't like him, he always makes it about the team. He always brings it back to the team. And he did that earlier.

This was actually yesterday on WEEI. Yeah, through it all. I'm not going to make this about me. You know, I want to make this about, you know, obviously this team and just trying to gain these guys' trust because I think that's the biggest thing that I have. I have the biggest challenges with doing. And making these guys understand, like, listen, man, I know it's been a lot to say I understand. I can feel, you know, the eyes and the attention that's on me as soon as I walk in the facility. But at the end of the day, you guys got to know a lot of that is BS.

And I'm here to remove all that. And he has. His teammates voted him a captain. And when you look at Cam's track record, other than Kelvin Benjamin, who I don't really put his opinion in any high value, nobody has criticized Cam who's played with him. There are no former teammates, despite Cam being arguably the most polarizing football player we've seen in the last decade, who's out here criticizing him saying it wasn't a good experience having him lead the football team.

Haven't seen any of it. It would have been convenient when he got cut and when he wasn't being picked up by a team, but we didn't see it. Why? Because Cam is a good teammate and he does make it about the team. And that's something he doesn't get nearly enough credit for, but it's a big reason why he's starting for the Patriots. I'm just impressed by someone who's matured a little more and become more self-aware. I'm excited about what the Patriots and Cam Newton can be in 2020.

Your attention, please. Back to the drive with Josh Graham on Sports Hub Triad. It's all starting to feel real. Watching college football over the weekend, we're five days away from the Panthers kicking it off against the Las Vegas Raiders. I don't think I'm going to be covering that game on Sunday due to, I think, space being at a premium for those who are closer to it in Charlotte. But I will be at Clemson Wake Forest on Saturday.

I'm being told only 20 to 25 people are going to be allowed to cover the number one team in America. So we'll be at that game. And I know Mick Mixon will have us covered on Sunday, the voice of the Panthers, calling Panthers Raiders one o'clock at Bank of America Stadium.

He now joins us. And Mick, I'm starting to think about it now, what type of game we expect to see on Sunday. Given we haven't had any preseason, I think it works to the Panthers' advantage, Joe Brady's advantage, Teddy Bridgewater's advantage, heck Robbie Anderson and some of these newer parts that the Raiders really don't have anything to go off of in terms of scheme and what it might look like.

But then conversely, Eli Apple's out of this ball game. He's going to miss the first three weeks. There are some holes on defense or I should say some question marks Carolina has in the Raiders. They're going to want to throw it a ton.

I think it looks like it might be a shootout, maybe an up tempo type of game. How do you read it? The same. I guess I should talk more since I'm the guest on your show. I agree with what you said.

First of all, Josh Graham, one of my keys to health, happiness and success of life besides not being on social media at all ever is to interpret all data in whatever way is most favorable to me. So this whole no fans thing, it's heartbreaking in a way, but the fans will be there. They just won't be right here. I'm talking to you now from the press area here in the stadium so I can see the field and I can see the stands.

There just won't be fans there, but there's still going to be tremendous interest. So I'm viewing this as a chance for our radio coverage to swing into play and be an even more important vehicle to transmit the unbelievable, the undeniable energy, the electricity of Coach Rule, Teddy Bridgewater, these draft picks, this new team, this new era, new school thinking to Carolina Panther fans. And you're right on it when you say, and I agree with you, that the Raiders will have one of the toughest week one scouts in the league. How are they to know? I mean the Panthers are so brand new.

Now they'll have educated guesses. They'll look at Temple, Baylor, Saints, they'll look at LSU, but the best they're going to be able to do is make a couple of educated guesses about how this Panther offense is going to attack them. And then defensively, for the Panthers, it's the same thing. But I think the game is going to boil down to the Raiders with this huge offensive line, maulers. I mean think, you're too young to remember mid-Atlantic championship wrestling, but I mean think the Missouri mauler, Sargent Slaughter and Bronco Lubich and Aldo Bogni and Rip Hawk.

I mean think about these villainous characters from a childhood such as mine. That's the Raider O-line. Richie Incognito, need we say more, Trent Brown, Pro Bowler from a year ago, Rodney Hudson, Pro Bowler from a year ago. They're going to try to just road grade the Panthers, I think, and root this defense right out of there and establish the run. Yeah, we got to know Cleland Farrell at Clemson the last handful of years.

He was a rookie last season. Mixing with us here, Panthers play-by-play man. So if we were to remove all the ways COVID has changed this fall camp, what have you noticed being one or two key differences between how Ron Rivera has led practices the last decade versus what you've seen with Matt Ruhle and his staff?

Night and day. Coach Ruhle will stop practice at different times and bring the team up and talk to them. He's faked the press corps out several times because up on the bank watch and we all think it's the end and everybody starts to pack up, but it's not the end. It's just he's a teacher and not that Coach Rivera was. Don't interpret anything I say about a Matt Ruhle practice to be at all corrosive to how Coach Rivera did it. It's just different. Multiple ways to skin a cat. Say again? Multiple ways to skin a cat. Precisely, yeah. Like you say.

And the other thing I love, this has always chapped me greatly. When coaches have a dedicated special teams period. So Joey Slyde to kick a field goal from 25 yards, then from 30, then from 35, then from 40, then from 45. Everybody claps. Oh, way to go, Joey.

That's a good set. But will someone please tell me when events like that occur during a game? The answer is never. It's like the guy that goes to the driving range and buys a bucket of balls and hits 60 drivers and then goes home. I just don't.

It's just as illogical to me. And Coach Ruhle, he'll stop practice at this organic, kind of idiopathic times, Josh, and he'll go, all right, number one field goal, number one field goal block, 42 yards, left hash, 20, 19, 18, 17 to simulate the way these events occur during the game. And if anybody's good at trying to prepare for a season opener without preseason games, it's Matt Ruhle who hasn't had it all these years at Temple and also with the Baylor Bears, Mick Mixon, Voice of the Panthers with us here.

Let's broaden the lens a bit. Who frightens you more in the NFC South, Tampa or New Orleans? Well, the Saints, because of that combination of their coach, Sean Payton, and their quarterback Drew Brees, it's almost unfair. For all the success that Belichick and Brady had, nobody ever got the sense that they were friends grilling out over at each other's houses.

Their wives got along. But in Drew Brees and Sean Payton, you have a veteran quarterback and a coach who was younger when he got started. Sean Payton played quarterback at Northern Illinois.

I believe it was Northern Illinois. And so he and Drew Brees are just like brothers, and that synchronicity makes offensive football look so, so, so easy. It's the Saints' division until somebody unseats them. I'm right there with you. I'm just excited it's all starting on Sunday, Mick Mixon. Look forward to hearing your voice and watching the telecast and hopefully when things get safer and more people are allowed to go to the games. I hope to see you. Fingers crossed for that Arizona Cardinals game in October, but I hope you're doing well.

We've made it to game week. Thanks for spending the time on our show today. My pleasure, young man. I'm proud of you.

I'm celebrating your many successes and call me anytime. Here we go. That's Mick Mixon, the voice of the Carolina Panthers. Sports Talk.

Saluting a fellow sportsman. If you're talking about it, I'm talking truth. We're talking about it.

Who are you talking to? Sports fans everywhere. This is Radio The Drive with Josh Graham. It's time for us to get crazy.

Bring the takes. 336-777-1600 is the phone number. We also have a Twitter poll you can vote at at sportsuptryit at Josh Graham Radio. Which candy company would you most like to own? Wonka, Hershey's, Nestle, or Jelly Belly.

If that sounds completely random to you, number one on the big four today. Apparently Jelly Belly is having a treasure hunt that the winner of gets their own Jelly Belly candy factory, Willy Wonka style. And right now, Robert, very early on in the vote, nobody has voted for Jelly Belly. 68% voting for Hershey's, 18 or make it 60% Wonka, 60% Nestle, no votes for Jelly Belly. That doesn't surprise me at all. It's kind of like Haribo.

They're just very limited in their selection. You're only going to get jelly beans. And some of those jelly beans are going to be the misflavored ones where it's either green apple or snot.

So you don't want to get mixed up there so I can understand people's unwillingness to choose Jelly Belly. All right, bring the hot take 777-1600. It's time for us to get crazy.

Cue the prance. We suspend journalistic integrity for a 10-minute stretch each week. We don't have many rules.

Here's what we got so far. Rule number one, don't curse. Rule number two, don't come in with a weak take. We will not judge a take for being too hot, but we will judge it if it's not hot enough. Rule number three, well, there isn't a rule number three.

Just call it at 777-1600. If it's a hot take, you'll be rewarded with this sound. Justin and Elkin, let's get crazy. Let's get crazy, Josh.

Hey, congratulations on your one year dating anniversary. I saw that over the weekend. Thank you. And Sarah Bradford, I'm sure appreciates that as well. Absolutely. So here's my hot take.

BYU is not only going to be the first independent to make the playoff, they will play Notre Dame. Whoa! Whoa! That's good stuff from Justin and Elkin. I thought it was going to be a hot take related to my girlfriend.

Josh Graham engaged in a month. Hot takes across the board over here. I did see someone say, get ready for Notre Dame, trying to fight for its case being in the college football playoff against the BYU saying, we deserve to be in because we played a conference championship game.

BYU didn't do that. All right. So bring those thoughts. 777-1600. I got a hot take, Robert.

You ready? Regular glazed donuts are overrated. Here's the thing. I don't like regular glazed donuts. I like the specialty donuts. When you look at the Krispy Kreme that I brought in today from the original Stratford road location in Winston, you're not going to find the original glaze in there. You're going to find pumpkin spice cheesecake and pumpkin spice cinnamon roll.

I just don't like the, I don't feel like I'm getting anything from the original glazed donuts. And if that sounds like heresy, I'm sorry. Robert, let's get crazy. This crap that's going on with Odell Beckham will not be the most embarrassing situation of his career.

We haven't gotten to the Odell Beckham stuff, but I'm going to quickly move from that. Can we go to Brad and Burlington? Brad and Burlington. Let's get crazy. Brad, go right ahead.

Hey, bud. Hot take here. Not too far fetched though. Tom Brady, two year contract Tampa Aaron Rogers plays two more years Packers. And then you know what happens then?

He comes to the bucks. We just keep right on rolling. Wow. Hot takes all around. 3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 1 600. If you want in on, let's get crazy.

I got another one right here. So we got college football, not tonight, not tomorrow, but Thursday night ACC football going right up against the start of the NFL season, the Texans facing the Kansas city chiefs. I don't know if there's going to be an upset there, even though I'm seeing the Texans are a double digit dog to Kansas city. I'm looking at Miami facing UAB, the blazers face Miami and Coral Gables, and they pull off the upset Thursday night to open ACC play. They played a game last week, Robert, so they're not going to be as rusty. They scored 45 points against central Arkansas. They came out of the gates. Well, Miami, they had some disappointing losses last year.

Manny Diaz, he hasn't pulled or proven anything to me yet. And I'm going to call it right out of the gate. UAB pulling off the upset. Should I go to Dwayne? Let's go to Dwayne and Thomasville. Let's get crazy. Dwayne.

All right. A two part ACC hot take Clemson will lose a regular season football game this year will blow out the, um, in the ACC championship game. And then for basketball, Carolina and Duke will not finish in the top two, neither team basketball season, football and basketball, double hot take from Dwayne and Thomasville. Robert let's get crazy. The Raptors played a terrible game yesterday, and I'm going to say they're going to come back being two down and then beat the heat in the finals to move on to the NBA finals.

Wow. And their series in the semi-finals of the Eastern conference. And then they're going to take out the Miami heat Robert coming in strong today. Oh, we got the human highlighter. Human highlighter is going to come in strong.

Close us out strong human highlighter. Let's get crazy. Let me tell you it's the one, it's the only, the man, the myth, the living legend, the H.A.

Here making a special appearance on a special Tuesday edition of let's get crazy. Let me tell you, if you got any money, if it's in the bank, if it's in your 401k, do yourself a favor and listen to the H.A.L. Take it all out right now. Find somebody to put that money on the line because the undefeated season begins this Saturday against Syracuse when the U.N.C. tie here begins the quest for another, for our first national championship. Pay Atlanta, space Syracuse, Duke, State, Boston College, all of the above, Virginia Tech, Miami. You got no shot. Clemson, you don't want a piece of it. Big 10, Pac-12, no wonder you decided to play back off this year. Mack is back.

There he goes. It's the human highlighter always delivering on let's get crazy. He doesn't call in every week, but when he does, he brings it. So Robert, who are the guests that we will interrupt whatever we're doing to bring onto this show? I would say him and Mike and Elkin. Turpentine Mike. Correct. Because there are more, there's more than one Mike and Elkin. So turpentine Mike and the human highlighter.

If you, if you're a great phone caller, 336-777-1600 and you bring it like those guys did, well then we'll, we'll maybe make some room for you. But we've been doing this for a couple of years now. Those are the ones that stand out to me thus far. All right, coming up, reality's already starting to set in. If you can believe that for the Carolina Panthers, doesn't it just seem like everything's so rosy and great until the first time your quarterback gets smashed. Well, that's already happening with the Carolina Panthers, believe it or not. I'll tell you why next on The Drive.

It's The Drive with Josh Graham on Sports Hub Triad. All right, I'm going to make this case to David Hale of ESPN before we get to a poll question that is of a very serious subject matter. After watching Navy last night get completely dismantled, I'm starting to feel like the favorites are more beatable than they've ever been before. 2020, you're looking at no spring practice, distractions all over the place. Kids are 18 to 22 last night checked, which means there are opportunities for teams to potentially be more focused, sweep in and potentially pull off an upset. Navy, they were favored by a couple of points. I've never seen Coach Ken's team get beat that badly.

And even though he admitted before the game that they haven't gone live at any point during fall camp until that game, I still expected a little bit more from the mids and we didn't get it. I say that as a transition into Wake Forest hosting Clemson College Game Day on Saturday. You're looking at Duke going into Notre Dame as well. Do you view Clemson, Notre Dame and really the top teams in the sport being more beatable, more susceptible to an upset than ever before based on what you saw over the weekend? David Hale of ESPN with us here. Oh, I forgot to bring up this stat as well.

Underdogs were four and one against the spread with two outright wins, and those outright wins were by double digit points. So David Hale, that's the case I'm making here. I'm trying to make people feel good when it comes to Wake Forest, maybe having a shot. Maybe you're looking at Duke as well.

Am I making a good case? Look, I got a hard time picking Wake Forest. Not any offense to the fine people on that team and involved with that program, which is light years ahead of where it was last year. I think last year's game might have been a pretty good one if they had been fully healthy. But this is still a very, very good Clemson team.

Wake Forest history is what it is. It's been 70 years since they've beaten a top 10 team. They've never beaten a number one team.

It's just real hard for me to envision this scenario. The Duke game, on the other hand, I certainly am not going to pick them to win. I think that's a long shot, but they've beaten Notre Dame before. David Cutcliffe is a really good coach. And the thing that David Cutcliffe does so well in games like this, and we've seen him do it against Florida State, against Clemson, and against Notre Dame in the past, is he manages to force his pace upon the opponent to give his team the best chance to win. Now, more often than not, the more talented team is going to win, and that is clearly Notre Dame. But look, Duke's defense is no joke.

Chris Rump and Victor DiMakaje and that back end of that defense is really good. Notre Dame's not going to just run up and down the field on them. So they play a sort of a methodical game and keep it close into the second half and into the fourth quarter, and you never know.

We're already into a very weird season. We saw with Navy last night what a lack of proper preparation can mean for a team, and so it's almost hard to know exactly what we're going to see from everybody out there, because frankly we've been taking coaches' words for it in terms of how ready they are, and clearly some teams are not. So I'm not saying that's going to be the case with Notre Dame, but I don't think it's science fiction to suggest that Duke might have a chance. I think it's probably a little bit longer shot for Wake Forest. What do you think is going to be the best game this weekend involving an ACC team? Is it Duke-Notre Dame? Probably the most intriguing one, yeah. I will say the Florida State-Georgia Tech one is interesting for a lot of reasons, number one being that, of course, this is Mike Norvell's debut at Florida State.

It'll be very interesting to see how that looks if everybody remembers back. Really search back in your memory banks all the way back to two years ago when Willie Taggart's debut came, and they got bludgeoned by Virginia Tech at home in their opener, and that was really the start of the end before Willie even had a chance to coach a second game. I don't think that's the case this time around, but look, Florida State's a relatively heavy favorite against the Georgia Tech team that finished strong, I think, last year.

You could see the strides that they made as the year went along. TBD on who Georgia Tech's quarterback's going to be, that's the way Jeff Collins likes to play it. They're pretty thin at some positions, though. If you look at the depth chart that they put out, they don't really put out a depth chart, they put out an over-the-line chart, which is essentially guys that they think are ready to play. Only five edge rushers, only four linebackers.

It's going to be pushing 100 in Tallahassee on Saturday. To me, the depth is going to be a real concern for Georgia Tech, but it's still a really interesting matchup because there's so many unknowns about both programs right now. Yeah, TSP and college football writer David Hale with us on Twitter, at a David Hale joint. We were talking about how Navy didn't go live until their opener last night, and we saw how badly that went. How many ACC teams did you know of might be able to relate to that and how little they've been able to tackle live?

Certainly one team that I would be looking at is Virginia. Bronco Mendenhall has been pretty forthright about the fact that really they have not, until this past week, done what he would consider to be exclusively football-related practices. I don't think they're going to be in as bad a shape as Navy was, but when you hear Navy's coaching staff talk about the precautions that they took, by far, I would say Bronco is the guy who that sounds the most like to me.

He has been very, I think some would call it pessimistic, some would call it objective about the virus and his concerns this year. I think if it was completely up to Bronco, they wouldn't be playing at all this year. I also know he is not somebody who doesn't want to give his guys the best chance to win, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's a team with some real rust.

They, however, have a little bit of time to kind of work the kinks out. The other team that I would be really worried about at this point is Syracuse, just because they've had a lot of fits and starts to their practices, multiple times decided to stop practice or take practice off because players were concerned about the virus. They've got a number of guys that are sitting out looking at their depth chart. They've got a former halfback tight end guy who's going to be their starting left guard, who checks in at nearly 60 pounds less than their right guard because they just don't have that kind of depth built up for their O-line. And look, maybe that's just the tip of the iceberg. I think quite frankly, Navy is not going to be unique.

We're going to see some bad football this weekend and really all season as players are made available or unavailable as teams are able to practice or not. There's going to be some real issues across the nation, I think. All right, let's get to the most important stuff. David Hale with us from ESPN. There was a story in which the Jelly Belly founder is going to host an online treasure hunt with the winner getting their own candy factory. That had me thinking, which candy company would you most like to own? And we've got it narrowed down to Jelly Belly, Hershey's, Nestle and Wonka. Where is David Hale going if he could own a candy factory? Willy Wonka style?

This is a great question. Now, I will say I've been to Hershey Park many times. I grew up in that area. Frankly, I just don't want to live in central Pennsylvania. No offense to the fine folks at Penn State.

But that's just, you know, I don't know if that's really my area to want to own a factory. Plus, just, you know, too much chocolate. Too much chocolate.

You know what? I don't want to go off the board here, but I'm a gummy bears fan. So I need to have gummy bears involved. I'm getting that more than anything else in the mentions. In the replies and in the mentions, I'm getting gummy bears more than anything else is things that didn't make the board. And I'm going to tell you something.

People are going to say Haribo's trash. I'm a black horn. So that's just that's just where we're going with this. That's incredible.

David Hale leaving with a hot take. It's good to hear from you, man. I don't know if you're going to be watching football in person at any point this year, but I hope I hope to see you out of the game sometime down the line. That sounds lovely. I look forward to it. There you go. Follow him on Twitter at a David Hale joint ESPN college football writer.