Buffalo opens Pete Lembo's third year at home against an FCS opponent that's rebuilding from the ground up — about as favorable a season-opening matchup as the Bulls could've drawn.
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Best BetBuffalo
Buffalo returns 6 preseason All-MAC honorees against an FCS team replacing its head coach and dozens of roster spots at once. That kind of talent and continuity gap in a season opener is about as close to a lock as moneyline betting gets, even with an unsettled Bulls quarterback battle.
UAlbany
+New coach Perkovich went 84-25 at Susquehanna
+38 new roster additions bring fresh talent in
−Went 2-10 in 2025 under previous staff
−Brand-new system installed with almost no time
−Short week after Friday opener vs. New Hampshire
Buffalo
+6 players on preseason All-MAC team
+Missed bowl by just 1 win in 2025
+Home opener, 112th season of program history
−Starting quarterback job unsettled into the opener
−Went just 5-7 overall, 4-4 in MAC last year
This is a program-building exercise more than a rivalry. UAlbany fired its previous staff after a 2-10 season in 2025 and hired Tom Perkovich off an 84-25 run at Division III Susquehanna, where he won 4 straight conference titles. He's walking into his first FBS test with 38 new players on the roster — 20 transfers, 18 freshmen — and barely a week to digest what he saw in the opener at New Hampshire before turning around for a Thursday night trip to Western New York.
Buffalo, meanwhile, is trying to make sure last year's near-miss doesn't repeat. The Bulls went 5-7 in 2025, 4-4 in the MAC, one win short of bowl eligibility under Lembo. Six players landed on Phil Steele's preseason All-MAC team, so there's talent to build around, but the starting quarterback job was still unsettled as of spring practice, with 3 candidates competing for the job. That's the swing factor for how fast this offense finds its rhythm out of the gate.
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None of that changes the calculus for opening night. Buffalo's kicking off its 112th season of football on home turf against a CAA team that finished a game short of double-digit losses last fall and is now installing a completely new system on the fly. The roster continuity gap is enormous, and that's before factoring in the short week UAlbany faces after its Friday opener against New Hampshire.
