Andy Staples shares his thoughts on week one of the CFB season

Key quotes from Andy Staples interview

"I thought A&M got off to a great start, but you have to be able to hold a lead. A little bit of the same deal that happened to Ole Miss on Monday night against Florida State. A&M kind of put a cork in it though, they figured out how to at least get through the game without UCLA just coming back completely. It's hard when you run an offense like that, it's hard to bleed the clock when you have a lead. It goes against your entire philosophy of fast, and it doesn't work unless you go fast. It feels like the hardest thing for those teams is figuring out a way to bleed clock, run the ball and just sit on a lead. So, that's something A&M is going to have to develop. They've got the backs for it, they can do it. It's one of those things, when you're playing against a good team and you run that kind of offense, no lead feels safe."

"All you had to do was watch the games on Saturday and you understand why Texas A&M, LSU and Auburn went so hard after Trevor Knight. You understand why Auburn and LSU were so disappointed that they didn't get him because they clearly needed him, too. There was only one late free agent to go around and Texas A&M got him and they're happy about that."

"Well I definitely think they should be able to slow down the run, their depth at defensive tackle is pretty impressive. There aren't many more teams in the country that have better interior D-line depth, so yeah, they should be able to slow it down pretty good. As far as doing running it offensively, you saw last week that A&M was pretty balanced and I think if they can get it a little more balanced even, they're going to be really tough to stop. Then they probably will be able to sit on lead, and once you can do that there's not much anything anybody can do to you."

"Alabama is really good. Alabama is a national title contender again, I don't think that's a shock to anyone. I don't think USC is as bad as everybody is making them out to be after that game. I think when you're playing against Alabama and things start to not go your way, that can snowball very quickly. The same thing happened to Michigan State last year at the Cotton Bowl. It was a 38-0 game but if you were there, it certainly didn't feel like a blowout for the first two and a half quarters. With Texas/Notre Dame, I was shocked at how quickly Texas' offense looked comfortable. Shane Buechele is a true freshman but looked like he had been doing it for years. Sterling Gilbert had never been the primary play caller before and I thought that was probably the biggest question going in. That's one thing going in, you don't know until you do it and he looked like he'd been doing it his whole life."

"Then Florida State/Ole Miss ... Ole Miss is good. Ole Miss has got good pass rushers, they're really deep on the D-line. Chad Kelly is as good as advertised, they have a great receiving corps, but they just don't know how to run the ball. They're going to win a decent amount of games, but they are going to struggle holding onto leads. There are going to be more games like that and they'll either hang on and win them as shootouts or, if it's a better team, the better team will come back and beat them like Florida State did. Florida State was the better team and I think you saw Jimbo Fisher get comfortable with plays for Deondre Francois after the first half. The protection was great but Francois was absolutely great. He moves so well, once he started moving his pocket around, there wasn't much Ole Miss could do."