The model's projections for Week 1 mostly agree with the market — except in a handful of games where the gap says more about preseason guesswork than anything else.
Week 1 is mostly a payroll exercise wearing a football uniform. Forty-eight games carry a market line this week, and a good number of them are the sport's oldest transaction: a program from outside the Power conferences cashes a check, and the host gets a live scrimmage before the schedule turns real. Ohio State hosting Ball State is the clearest version of that. The market has the Buckeyes as 49.5-point favorites. The model sees it as slightly worse than that, at 53.1 — a 3.6-point gap, which happens to be the single widest disagreement on the entire board this week.
That the widest split of the week shows up in a game nobody thinks is competitive says something. When the outcome isn't in doubt, precision starts to look a little silly on both sides. Nobody is more right for having Ohio State by 53 instead of 49.5. It's just a different guess about the size of a margin that was never going to matter to the final score in any meaningful sense.
Across all 48 priced games, the average gap between the model's number and the market's is 0.67 points. That's tight. Most weeks, most games, the model and the market are looking at roughly the same picture and landing in roughly the same place — which is what you'd hope for from a market that's been pricing these teams for months.
The disagreements that do show up cluster almost entirely in the same category of game: heavy favorites against outmatched opponents, where projecting margin becomes more art than science. Troy over Sam Houston is a good example — the model has Troy by 18.4, the market by 16.0, a 2.4-point gap. Rutgers over Massachusetts is similar: 32.1 for the model against 30.5 for the market, 1.6 points apart. Notre Dame over Wisconsin splits by 1.2 points, with the model at 21.7 and the market at 20.5.
Then there are two spots where the model is actually the more conservative number. USC over San José State: the market has the Trojans by 38.0, the model by 36.6, so the model sits 1.4 points shorter there. Florida State over New Mexico State runs the same direction — market at 31.0, model at 29.8, a 1.2-point gap. None of these are arguments. They're just where two different methods, looking at the same blowout, landed a point or two apart.
Ohio State sits atop the power ratings at 31.8, built on the best defensive number in the top 12 at -17.2 alongside an offense rated 14.7. Oregon is next at 28.3, then Notre Dame at 25.8 and Georgia at 25.5. Indiana checks in fifth at 24.5, ahead of Texas at 23.7 and Texas Tech at 23.1 — worth sitting with for a second, since it puts Indiana above two programs that get talked about with a lot more preseason reverence.
Miami rounds out the top eight at 21.0, and from there it's Texas A&M at 20.3, LSU at 20.2, Alabama at 18.2 and Oklahoma at 17.2 closing out the group. LSU's offense number, 6.6, is the lowest among that stretch, propped up by a -13.5 defensive rating. Alabama's profile looks similar — a modest 5.4 offense rating carried by a -13.4 defense. Whether that formula holds up once real competition starts is exactly the kind of question Week 1 against overmatched opponents won't answer.
No games have been played yet this season, so there is no accuracy record attached to any of this and no betting record to point to, good or bad. These are projections published for transparency, not a track record, and definitely not a recommendation on how to bet anything on this slate.
The model has no demonstrated edge against the closing market, and nothing above should be read as suggesting otherwise. A 0.67-point average gap across 48 games is a sign of a model that's roughly in line with the market most of the time, which is a fine place to start a season. It is not proof of anything beyond that.