College football Week 4: 15 players to watch

With the wealth of great games this week, you may decide to skip over Alabama's home tilt with Southern Miss. Sure, Tua Tagovailoa and the Crimson Tide will likely roll over the Eagles and flex their elite muscles, but you should still check in on this one and Southern Miss' quarterback Jack Abraham. Last week against Troy, Abraham threw for 463 yards and two touchdowns in a 47-42 win over the Trojans...much of that to receivers Quez Watkins and Jaylond Adams. It was a game of big plays and Abraham kept bringing them. Alabama will be ready for this explosive attack to be sure, but it will be interesting to see how he responds after he struggled two weeks ago against Mississippi State. No question, Southern Miss will go out slinging.

Anderson exploded for 179 yards and two touchdowns in the Horned Frogs' 34-13 win at Purdue. The senior has rebounded nicely from a disappointing 2018 season when he rushed for less than 600 yards and only three TDs. (He rushed for 100 yards just once all year.) TCU hosts SMU in a Dallas-Ft. Worth showdown this Saturday. The last time these two played at Carter Stadium, Anderson rushed for 89 yards and two touchdowns in TCU's 56-36 win in 2017. 

Book has been good this season, throwing for 553 yards and six touchdowns in the Irish's two wins...but that was against Louisville and New Mexico. Notre Dame travels to Georgia on Saturday with a lot to prove. The last time the Fighting Irish played an opponent of this caliber, Book couldn't get anything done in a 27-point loss to Clemson in the Cotton Bowl. Against Georgia, Book will have to be excellent to pull out the upset. Notre Dame's running attack has been stagnant, so he will have try to expose the Bulldogs' rebuilt secondary with his passing. If the Irish have any shot at making the College Football Playoff, Book needs to be huge in this moment. 

Brown wreaks havoc on offenses. He's a powerful man who has an ability to fight off blockers or just shove them into the backfield and disrupt plays. He doesn't just use his brute strength to overpower blockers, as he also is athletic enough to use moves and techniques to make linemen look really bad. Auburn's front line will have a lot to deal with, as the Tigers take on Kellen Mond and the Texas A&M Aggies. This is an elimination game of sorts for the SEC West, as the losing team will have a near-impossible task of trying to get off the mat and run the table in a division filled with great teams. Brown will need to be an enforcer on defense and create chaos for that A&M offense. 

If you look at the Huskies during this young season, you can obviously see that Eason's performance directly ties to their success. In U-Dubs' two wins, the Georgia transfer has averaged 305 passing yards and totaled seven touchdowns while completing 74 percent of his passes. In the Huskies' loss to Cal, he completed 18 of 30 passes for 162 yards, no TDs and his lone interception on the season. Washington heads to battle-tested BYU this week in what could be a trap game of sorts — quarterbacks have found the Cougars defense to be much improved. Eason must continue to find his playmakers like Hunter Bryant and take a big "W" back to Seattle. 

Gabriel passed his first test and in a big way. The true freshman went 22-of-30 for 347 yards passing and four touchdowns in an 18-point win over the Stanford Cardinal in just his second start. As of right now, his passer rating trails only Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa nationally and has many people comparing him to the quarterback who would be starting right now if not for a brutal injury last season: McKenzie Milton. This week, the Knights head to Pittsburgh in one of their biggest regular-season games during this magical three -year stretch, which has seen them go 30-1. 

While Gardner Minshew is wowing NFL fans with his fashion sense (and mustache), Gordon has settled in nicely as his replacement in Pullman. Gordon leads the nation in passing yards (1,324 yards) and has tossed 12 touchdowns and just two interceptions. Last week he completed 36 of his 48 passes for 440 yards and three TDs in a win over Houston and even showed a bit of an ability to run the football. OK, seven attempts for 16 yards doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was his ability to move around in the pocket and extend plays that has the Cougars back as a real threat to the Pac 12 North division title. Washington State hosts a limping UCLA team on national television Saturday night, and Gordon should keep piling up the stats.

While you settle down to watch Oklahoma State battle Texas on ABC this Saturday night, get to know Cowboys running back Chuba Hubbard. Hubbard has two huge games this season — 221 rushing yards and three touchdowns in the season-opening win over Oregon State and 256 yards and three TDs in last week's win over Tulsa. The Longhorns are a step up for the Cowboys, but Hubbard is a workhorse in that offense (29 average carries in the games mentioned) and has replaced Justice Hill quite nicely. If Oklahoma State is going to stick with Texas on Saturday night, Hubbard will having yet another huge game. 

While Tigers fans are excited to have a quarterback like Joe Burrow, they should be equally excited to have a receiver such as Justin Jefferson. He was huge two weeks ago in the win over Texas (nine catches, 163 yards, three TDs) and had another great game against Northwestern State last week (five receptions, 124 yards). The junior from Louisiana broke out last season, and his start to 2019 has been a continuation of that despite moving to more of an inside receiver. LSU travels to Vanderbilt for its SEC opener. 

Justin McMillan is fun to watch, since you never know what you're going to get. The LSU transfer can have a huge performance or a frustrating showing...sometimes in the same game. Last season, he went 5-1 in his six starts for the Green Wave and had one of the more peculiar stat lines of the season. Against East Carolina, he completed just 12 of 28 passes but for 372 yards and three touchdowns. Yes, three of his 12 completions were for touchdowns while he also had 16 incompletions. Two weeks ago against Auburn, he completed just 10 of his 33 passes in the loss to the Tigers. This week, Tulane gets to play on a national stage against Houston on Thursday night, which is a great opportunity for McMillan to show his dual-threat skills. 

Texas A&M is in the midst of one of the most brutal stretches of any team in the nation. Two weeks after the Aggies lost at Clemson (and three weeks before hosting Alabama), A&M hosts No. 8 Auburn at Kyle Field. Sure, quarterback Mond was fantastic in the wins over cupcakes Texas State and Lamar but was a mixed bag in the Clemson game (24-of-42 for 236 yards, one TD and one interception; five rushes for 1 yard). That was the sort of showing he had in his last game against Auburn, where he struggled against a Tigers defense that has only gotten better this year. How Mond goes is how A&M goes, and he will need to keep Auburn's outstanding front seven guessing if the Aggies plan on pulling off the mild upset. 

Patterson had nearly identical stats in the first two games of the season, yet they felt so different. Sure, a big part of that is the three touchdowns he threw against Middle Tennessee while he failed to throw a TD in the overtime win over Army last week, but it still felt as more of a struggle against the Black Knights. Michigan feels as if it is the best team in the Big Ten and this is its time to finally strike, and Patterson's experience in the offense is a big part of that thinking. This is a huge game to prove it, and Michigan has lost five straight in Madison. Patterson will need to be big time. 

Swift has been able to take it easy so far this season, as he's carried the ball only 31 times in three games and caught just three passes on the season. That will all change between the hedges on Saturday night, as Notre Dame heads to Athens. The Irish's defense is solid but is it ready for the speed that Swift and that Georgia offense possess?  Last year during a stretch of games where UGa faced LSU, Florida, Kentucky and Auburn, Swift rushed for 129.5 yards per game and scored four touchdowns. 

The Badgers have a huge game this week — hosting Michigan at Camp Randall — and Taylor will need to be at his best if Wisconsin wants to make a statement with a win. Taylor led the nation in rushing the last year, and he's off to a solid start to 2019 (237 yards in two blowout wins). What is scary is he's becoming a factor in the passing game now. He's caught five passes already (he caught just eight in each of his first two seasons), and three of them went for his first receiving touchdowns in his career. Last season, Taylor had his second-worst rushing outing of the season against Michigan...and he still gained 101 yards. 

So who is this Kyle Trask? Trask, of course, went in after Feleipe Franks' gruesome ankle injury and led the Gators to a comeback victory over Kentucky by completing nine of his 13 passes for 126 yards and ran in the go-ahead touchdown. He's a junior who went to Florida in the same class as Franks and who backed up Houston's D'Eriq King in high school. The Kentucky win was the first significant game experience he has had in college and he nailed it. With Franks out for the season, it is Trask's team now as Florida hosts rival Tennessee this Saturday.