The CFB Degenerate's Newsletter: Week Zero Prep
Season ending injuries, confusing depth charts, and a few last offseason thoughts.
It will be different but worse. We were the Leopards and Lions; those who take our place will be little jackals.
- Prince Salinas, The Leopard (2025)
I’ve recently made a habit of starting (almost) every day with a swim in the morning. In addition to the physical benefits of the exercise, I’ve registered equally strong mental effects as well. I imagine it’s similar to starting the day off with a freezing cold shower, or some sort of ice plunge.
While there are many things I dislike about the building my wife and I moved to last year, one of the cool parts of it is undoubtedly the swimming pool, which I didn’t really value beforehand as I assumed everyone and their mother would be using it at all times. Not so (fortunately for me).
I also don’t like the area as much as my old place. The neighbourhood I used to live in here in Toronto was a magical place called “Little Portugal” which had an inimitable vibe, founded upon a mix of Portuguese/Brazilian immigrants, along with others, and a steady contingency of hipster white girls from the ‘burbs.
The result was a distinctly European but also South American flavour—very laid back, lots of coffee shops, lots of gluten free, lots of bike stores, ice cream shops, cafes, even arcades. A lot of mom and pop shops. I’m not a big-business guy when it comes to what kind of establishments populate my immediate neighbourhood so I appreciated this.
While the neighbourhood we live in now is basically right beside that one—no more than a 20 min drive to my old building, or 45 min walk—there is a distinctly different vibe. It’s closer to downtown, for one, and you don’t get any of the old European/South American immigrants like my old place. This has dramatic (and I would argue negative) consequences on the vibe.
There are still some traces of the hipster-bohemian energy I hold so near and dear to my heart around here, but mostly, that flavour has been replaced by the young professionals who work downtown vibe. I’ve already ranted in the past about the dog owners around here, which I won’t rehash for the reader’s benefit.
Beyond that, there are a lot of ‘influencer’ vibes, a lot of I don’t know how this person affords this lifestyle vibes, a lot of expensive ‘wellness’ and ‘self care’ businesses that offer things like a DEXA scan. There are a lot of people around who seem to work in entertainment industries (which is perhaps why many of the previously mentioned businesses are so prevalent here).
Every building (including ours, obviously) has a pool on a rooftop, sometimes two. In fact, there is a building that I can see from my home office currently listing a penthouse condo at $15 million Canadian dollars with its own pool on the 10th-ish floor, and another two floors beneath it that also have their own pool.
This building is beside another building that, of course, also has a pool (much larger than the previously mentioned individual pools), which is next to a commercial building with a restaurant called Lavelle that has its own rooftop pool. This rooftop restaurant is basically parallel in my line of sight with another commercial rooftop pool (part of a hotel) one street over.
By my count this summer—and this is just from my home office’s view, undoubtedly there are others of which I have not yet captured—there are about a dozen or so rooftop pools within a one block radius. I even purchased a telescope to start counting with more precision. And I’ll be damned if every time I start doing more research with that thing that I don’t find another freaking rooftop pool.
I had no idea when I used to (rarely) come through this neighbourhood in the past that everyone around here is really just floating in chlorine liquids dozens of floors above us in the sky.
This brings me back to the point I wanted to communicate at the beginning. I’ve been doing lots of swimming this summer. Most days I go early enough that I’m not only the sole person in the pool but the only person on the deck. From my building’s pool, I can see another building’s pool maybe 30 or 40 yards from me, and usually when I go in the morning, there isn’t anyone there either.
But every now and then, I’ll go in the afternoon or later in the evening. And when I do, it is always much busier. Given the profile of the demographic around here, it tends to be a lot of 20-something women who all look like their job title is ‘influencer’ or ‘social media manager.’ Fortunately for me, none of them actually go in the pool—they’re all just there for the tan. Fair enough.
My wife jokes with me as I leave our place to go swim, “Do I have anything to worry about?” to which I always reply without hesitation, “Absolutely.”
I’m joking, of course, but there are merits to the ‘next man up’ mentality in this life—particularly within the confines of college football. The wise CFF manager is always assessing his options and looking to upgrade his position groups, no matter who they have rostered.
Which brings me to my point; in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock these past few weeks, there have been some unfortunate season-ending injuries. As has become customary in August, a CFF darling at RB—Quinten Joyner—suffered a season-ending knee injury on August 18th. This is around the same time that Texas’ CJ Baxter lost his 2024 season last year.
Joyner’s season-ending knee injury is a tough blow for all involved, obviously, but I want to share a quick text message exchange I had with a close friend of mine, Henri, who has been one of the most successful CFF managers in my home league, “The Golden Pig Invitational,” and who had spent a second-round pick on Joyner this year:
He’s absolutely right. And as someone who drafted Mo Ibrahim with the third overall pick in 2021, I can attest to the fact that losing early round picks to injury at the beginning of the year is not the end of the world—nor does it mean you can’t still have the best CFF roster in your league.
Alabama’s Jamorien Miller couldn’t elude the injury bug either, but lucky for him (and his CFF shareholders), he’s expected to be back by conference play (the Georgia game, specifically). I mean, sure, maybe. It was a broken collarbone last I heard, which means he’ll probably not be 100% until a week or so into October but that’s just me spitballing.
Clemson’s Adam Randall suffered a “minor knee” injury earlier last week and missed some time but is reportedly back in the swing of things.
And I'd be remiss not to mention that Iowa’s Kamari Moulton is currently nursing a hamstring injury (is back at practice Aug. 22). Though there have not been any reports casting doubt on his week one availability, the nature of hamstring injuries does lead me to consider the possibility that Moulton may miss some games this year.
In any event, some names you may want to familiarize yourselves with now rather than later are: Texas Tech’s J’Kolby Williams, who had a phenomenal bowl game performance this past year. He’s been tabbed as the next one up by most prognosticators but I will remind the audience of a similar situation last year when everyone thought Jaydon Blue was going to be the plug-in for Baxter after he went down.
Cameron Dickey is another name in that Tech backfield to keep in mind also. Though I will say I was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t going to be more of a split than many might have expected given the quotes from writers on both Joyner and Williams prior to the injury. Williams, in particular, seems to have a lot of fans on the Texas Tech beat. He’s a slight player, however, which casts some doubt as to whether he’ll be able to handle a heavy workload resembling anything that Tahj Brooks received. I guess we’ll see.
On the Alabama side, I would expect Richard Young to shoulder a heavier load on offence. I don’t know much about his pass catching abilities, nor have we really seen much of his rushing in college thus far. The good news is the Tide start the season with somewhat of a ‘real’ game vs. FSU, so we should get a pretty good idea of what the plan will be in Miller’s absence.
I would basically budget for the fact that Clemson’s Adam Randall will go down at some point this year based on his injury history. As far as whether there’ll be value behind him when it happens, it’s hard to say. If you can afford to do so, it may be beneficial to stash Gideon Davidson, the freshman, in hopes that he may ascend into RB1 bellcow status late in the year. In most leagues formats, it won’t make sense to do so because of limited roster spots.
Jaizun Patterson at Iowa is sort of the obvious name that stands out if Moulton is a no-go. Patterson and Moulton were expected to be the top two competing to replace Kaleb Johnson from a year ago. I like Moulton’s upside better, but Patterson has shown to be a solid commodity in his limited action. On volume alone, he could have a few standout performances early in the year depending on Moulton’s health. They play Albany (FCS) in week one.
If you do find yourself afflicted by the injury bug at RB, and are looking for some ideas to get you out of this hole, you may consider other alternatives to the above mentioned names.
Looking at undecided backfields that are of high interest to the CFF community, some names to watch closely as we approach the start of the season include Arizona State’s Raleek Brown (who converted to WR a few offseasons ago but is apparently back in the mix at RB), Tyrell Reed at ULM, and Caleb Ramseur at Nevada.
To be clear, each of these guys is mentioned here because they are not players that people think of when they think of these backfields, but each has a very real chance of being RB1s, too.
Starting with Brown, he’s been a camp standout, and in particular, a fall camp standout, playing his best ball in August this offseason. He’s a bit of an enigma, given that he hasn’t really played much ball in college. The Sun Devils play Northern Arizona, which I’m guessing is an FCS program, in week one. We will most likely not receive clarity on the backfield rotation at that juncture given the quality of the opponent. Week two vs. Mississippi State is the one to watch closely. The prevailing thought is ASU runs a committee to start the year, but things can always change quickly.
Arkansas transfer Tyrell Reed ought to be talked about more this offseason too. Given that we don’t receive much, if any, info out of ULM, it’s a pure guessing game every offseason trying to figure out who the starter will be. ZPS and D’Shaun Ford are the two logical options based on a variety of factors, but Reed is a former SEC player himself, and he’s actually wearing Ahmad Hardy’s old high school number (#29). ULM also opens the year against an FCS opponent, but I actually think this game will offer us the clarity we desire on reading that backfield.
Finally, Nevada is a team that wants to re-establish the run this year. I did an offseason piece on San Diego State a few weeks ago, and in it I cited the Aztecs’ supreme rushing success in earlier decades—success that unfortunately they have recently strayed away from. Nevada could be on a similar timeline this season, the question is: who’s going to lead the attack? Utah State transfer Herschel Turner is the betting favourite to be the starter. However, Ramseur is Nevada’s leading returning rusher from last year, and by all accounts he’s in the mix still for lead duties as well.
The Wolfpack play PSU week one, which will not provide much clarity on the matter. Week two vs. Sacramento State is the one to circle.
August Depth Charts are Being Released (but I do not care)
I’m putting this section into this newsletter as almost a PSA to the readers and another reminder to myself—I probably can’t summarize it any better than I did in this tweet from late July:
But yes, it’s that time of year again and August depth charts are being released. I think my favourite so far was the lovely Iowa State chart listing both Chase Sowell and Xavier Townsend as WR2s with “OR” in their names. Yeah, alright Matt Campbell, you’re not faking anybody out pal, you’ve just admitted to us all that you’re a two-bit scoundrel and nothing more
Kansas State released a chart with two RB sections. That’s always fun. Is Dylan Edwards in trouble?!?!? I mean, he could be, but the last piece of information I’d use to judge that would be an August depth chart.
I’m at the point where I just don’t care what an August depth chart says. Some coaches are truthful about it, some are outright liars. Discerning who’s who is damn near impossible. Making drastic moves (or any moves) based on August depth charts is like going into the combine as an NFL GM and ignoring everything you’ve done in terms of research all offseason leading up to this point in favour of the most recent (and somewhat dubious) datapoint you’re receiving in the process.
I would say, at this point in the offseason, trust your research, your process, and the information we received for the duration of the offseason. Roll with that and let’s see what happens in week one.
It will be different but worse. We were the Leopards and Lions; those who take our place will be little jackals.
- Prince Salinas, The Leopard (2025)
Final Offseason Thoughts
A week ago my wife and I watched a TV series called Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) based on the 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
The story’s main subjects, Prince Salinas, also known as the Leopard, and his family, are old money in Sicily. They are essentially aristocrats on the island and enjoy a frivolous lifestyle.