Baylor has its own fixes in progress. New defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman was brought in to clean up a unit that let Dave Aranda's seat get hot, and safety Colby McCalister is back after missing all of 2025 with injury. Auburn opened as the favorite in early markets, which tracks with the sheer scale of its roster reset, but seven weeks out is seven weeks of things that can change.
Neither of these programs is walking in with much margin for error. Auburn finished 5-7 and 1-7 in the SEC a year ago, the number that got Freeze fired. Baylor matched it at 5-7, with its season effectively cooked before December after a loss to Houston. That shared desperation is a big part of why this one carries more juice than a typical Week 1 opener between two 2025 also-rans.
The quarterback swap says a lot about each program's risk tolerance. Brown gives Golesh a plug-and-play system fit — he ran this exact scheme at USF — while Lagway is the higher ceiling, higher variance bet. He led the SEC in interceptions last season with 14, a number Baylor has to hope was more Florida's collapse than a Lagway problem, because the arm talent that made him a five-star recruit never left.
Whatever Atlanta gets on September 5, it won't lack for storylines: two coaches making their program debuts, a marquee transfer QB duel, and a running back facing the school that let him walk. For two teams trying to prove last season was the outlier, this is as good a stage as Week 1 offers.