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Podcast: Big Bets On Campus Episode: College Football Offseason Update | Part 2 Segment: UConn podcast segment **Team-Specific Podcast Notes** - **UConn under 6.5 wins** — Duck would have made it **5 flat** and said he’d be stunned if they get to seven. He’d play it **down to 5.5**. - **UConn may be even shakier than the market thinks**: new staff, open QB battle, and almost complete roster turnover on offense. The schedule includes Maryland, Syracuse, UNC, JMU, ODU, Air Force, and Wyoming late. - **UConn:** Jason Candle inherits a team with almost no continuity and an unsettled QB room. Duck expects the defense/offense/special teams to all look worse than last year and doesn’t believe six wins is realistic. Transcript excerpt: And there's no, let's feel good in the month of September, get some tin cans, line them up, knock them down. No You and I both know, and everybody listening in knows at this point, Jason Candle was a guy in the MAC who did less with more year after year after year. Toledo always had more talent than anybody in the MAC, and what Jason Candle should have done was win about 3 or 4 MAC titles, and I think he ended with one. Now he comes to UConn, you've got the independent scheduling, it's a lot of weird spots, there's absolutely zero roster continuity whatsoever. I've got these guys favored in four games this season. I don't think that UConn, offense, defense, special teams, I don't think it looks anywhere close to what we saw last season. Every offensive position was completely gutted. All of the production is gone. When you look at the defense at all three levels of the defense, you've got a lot of transfers coming in. It's going to take a ton of time for these guys to really kind of put the defense together and make it look good on the field. And you have a lot of talent that comes in that was really unproven at their prior stops. So I'm not going to assume that all of these guys are going to be in the right position, are going to play cohesively together starting day one. Then I look at the schedule. You have Maryland on the schedule, Syracuse, North Carolina. Well, those are three teams that are really going to be vying for bowl game eligibility and really three programs that have to have it this season. You have the top two teams in the Sun Belt that come in in JMU and ODU. You got to go to Temple, who's emerging, at Miami of Ohio, at Air Force. And then, oh, by the way, if you happen to find yourself trying to make a bowl game last week of the season, you get a trip to Laredice in the snow to play Wyoming. I don't think there's a lot in store for positivity with UConn this season. I would be stunned if they win seven games. And this is another team that I just don't think that they even make a bowl game. I don't think six and six is where they're at. So we get a win total of six and a half. I think we're good all the way down to five and a half. This is another one I would have made at five flat. Everything that you said, I just want to add into the fact new coaching staff, Vinyano's out the door, and they have an open quarterback battle, four-way open quarterback battle that is going to extend into fall camp. They were hoping that Merklinger from Tennessee comes in, secures the job. He actually only played a single drive in the spring game, I should say, hurts his wrist, and then has been straight closed for the rest of it. So it's clear that they're going to have that kind of vacuum of leadership offensively. What is their team going to look like? There's so many moving parts. As you mentioned, the schedule sets up that they have some weird travel spots. They're playing teams with real edge that are bowl-quality teams just sprinkled throughout this schedule. So even if it was the exact same team from last year and you lost a Skylar Bell, I would still have questions about this team vis-a-vis the schedule, as opposed to this team that lost almost all of their offensive engine when you look at, you know, the running back room depleted, quarterback room depleted. Skylar Bell was really a once-in-a-generation player for a program like UConn. All of these elements, it's just pointing down, down, down. All right, let's close out with one more. It's kind of new to the G6 world. We have to get used to this environment where Oregon State and Wazoo are under our purview. But Wazoo is a team that, obviously, there's been so much upheaval in terms of conference affiliation, in terms of who's coaching, in terms of the quarterback rooms. It's just been a revolving door. But you are feeling a little bit more optimistic if you can get the right price point. And we beat the drum on this all the time. You've got to seek out the right numbers.