by Patrick Zier | Sep 4, 2025 |
Chase Briscoe is killing it. Since early May, Briscoe, not Denny Hamlin, not Kyle Larson or anybody else you care to name, has been the best driver in NASCAR.
Over that period, Briscoe has dominated the Old Guy Sport competition index, which measures competitiveness on all tracks except superspeedways (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) because you can’t measure competitiveness on those tracks.
Avoiding the big wreck and being at the right place at the right time on the last lap determines who wins and how you finish at those places.
Meanwhile Briscoe, in his first year in an elite car, has pushed everybody else aside including his teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing. Nobody expected this, and Gibbs, in fact, was criticized for picking Briscoe out of the rubble of Stewart-Haas Racing when that organization finally collapsed last year and he needed somebody to replace Martin Truex.
But Gibbs has been vindicated. Briscoe started to muscle his way to the top after the race at Kansas, where he finished fourth. Expectations for him were high all along because he was driving for one of the two best teams in NASCAR, but until that race he was struggling driving a car that could do things he never dreamed of doing with Stewart-Haas.
“Kansas was like the light switch,” James Small, Briscoe’s crew chief, commented on NASCAR’s website after last week’s win at Darlington. That victory made Briscoe the first driver to advance to the round of 12 in the playoffs.
“I really think that’s when things started coming together and him understanding it,” Small said. “I think just within the team, with Chase himself and everything, I think it was the final stage at Kansas,” Small said.
According to the OGS competition index, ever since then Briscoe has been running away from everybody else. Counting Kansas, Briscoe has two wins, three seconds, one third, one fourth and one fifth over the 14 race period and has led laps under green in four other races, meaning he has been blanked in only two.
That totals up to a whooping 343 points on the OGS competition index, far more than anybody else except maybe Shane van Gisbergen, who has 295. But van Gisbergen got all of his points with four straight road course wins. He has yet to score a single point on an oval. Hamlin, with 254 points, almost one hundred fewer than Briscoe, is third and William Byron, with 187, is fourth.
That it took Briscoe a while to settle in is understandable. Briscoe has always known what he had to do to win in a race car, he just never had a car capable of doing it until he got to Gibbs. So it took him a while to realize things were different now.
Briscoe is a guy who has always had to prove himself, beginning when he was a youngster and his dad didn’t really want him to race. The climb has been long and hard and mostly in inferior equipment, which kept the pressure on as Briscoe tried to stand out from the crowd.
But it’s made him mentally tough. Nothing was given to him. “I don’t know, I’ve always just loved being in high pressure situations,” Briscoe said. “I feel like I just perform better for whatever reason.
“I feel like my whole career has been a high pressure situation. There was no backup plan. You might only get one race, you’ve got to go perform, show your worth,” he continued. “I’ve always felt like every week I’m still auditioning to prove I belong here.”
“We went through a whole process of who’s going to replace Martin (Truex),” Gibbs remarked. “The way we do things at our race team, it’s everybody sitting around, all of our management group, and we go through a lot of discussions; who would fit best, who matches up with our sponsor.
“And certainly we felt like Chase matched up well with Bass Pro Shops,” Gibbs said. “It’s a big process. It’s very important because that’s a quarter of our race team. We got a lot of people depending on that.
“It becomes critical, those decisions, because we all know you’re not going anywhere unless you’re got a really, really good crew chief and a really, really good pit crew and a really, really good driver,” Gibbs said.
And Briscoe, as he has proven over the last few months, is a really, really good driver.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at St. Louis: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at St. Louis: Austin Cindric. Top five at St. Louis last year: 1-Cindric, 2-Hamlin, 3-Brad Keselowski, 4-Tyler Reddick, 5-Joey Logano.
Last week’s Darlington picks: 1-Hamlin, 2-Larson, 3-Ryan Blaney. Darlington winner: Briscoe. OGS sport season record after 22 races: 10-11, no pick in Pocono race.
OGS competition index top 10 after 22 races: 1-Hamlin 472, 2-Briscoe 403, 3-Larson 366, 4-William Byron 326, Christopher Bell 326, 6-Shane van Gisbergen 295, 7-Blaney 293, 8-Bubba Wallace 161, 9-Alex Bowman 158, 10-Chase Elliott 148.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most similar to St. Louis): 1-Hamlin 261, 2-Briscoe 232, 3-Larson 229, 4-Byron 186, 5-Blaney 119, 6-Wallace 118, 7-Ross Chastain 102, 8-Logano 79, 9-Reddick 73, 10-Bell 71.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 4, 2025 |
TAMPA – There’s no denying it. Florida has the toughest schedule in the country, and South Florida just made it tougher. For Florida, this wasn’t supposed to be a big game. LSU is a big game. Miami is a big game. Texas is a big game. Georgia is a big game. All are ranked in the top 10 in the country.
And then you have Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Florida State. That last wasn’t supposed to be a big game, either, but after beating Alabama, the ‘Noles are ranked in the nation’s top 25, as are all the rest. USF, by the way, received votes after hammering Boise State.
So Florida knows it will have more on its hands than expected when it collides with USF Saturday in Gainesville.
One of the most interesting aspects of this game is the battle of the quarterbacks, Florida’s DJ Lagway and USF’s Byrum Brown. Both are coming off injuries that impacted their team’s season a year ago and both looked healthy and strong in their openers last week.
There is no question that from a physical and talent standpoint, Lagway is elite. Playing to his potential, he is probably as good as anybody in the country. But Brown is really not far behind. He can carry a team on his back. He’s a difference maker.
But USF has more going for it than just Brown. With Brown, the offense is potentially explosive and the defense appears to have taken a major jump forward.
“This is a team, not a one-quarterback show here,” Florida Coach Billy Napier commented according to Florida’s football website. “It’s going to be important to contain him (Brown). We’re going to have to rush as a team and work together to compress the pocket and keep him in the pocket,” he added.
For Napier, this is a potential “gotcha” game. He can’t lose this, not with the schedule that’s in front of him. There is tremendous pressure on Napier to produce an SEC contender after three years of mediocrity, become relevant again nationally, and a loss to USF would be potentially devastating.
Napier saved his job last year with a late season turn around that started with wins over 22nd ranked LSU and 18th ranked Ole Miss, a decisive victory over arch-rival Florida State and a bowl win over Tulane.
It continued when the Gators crushed Long Island U. in their opener this year, and Florida simply can’t afford to go off the rails against USF.
From a South Florida standpoint, this is another huge game, a chance for this team to continue to develop a winning attitude, to see if it can put the Boise win behind it and move on.
“It’s part of growing, it’s part of what we’re building, right?” USF Coach Alex Golesh said here this week. “It’s, and I said it a week ago, it’s part of handling success. Wining programs are able to do that because winning programs are used to winning,” Golesh said.
“I think in a winning program you truly forget about it (winning a big game) the next day and you move on. We’ve conveyed that to them (the players), we’ve pushed the heck out of doing that,” Golesh said.
“I think anytime you’ve got an opponent like we have if you’re looking behind in any way you’re out of your mind,” Golesh emphasized. “And truly, I think these guys are mature enough to handle that.
“All you’ve got to do is look up and see what’s in front of you,” Golesh continued. “If you’re going to take a breath and say this happened a week ago and I’m going to enjoy it you’re going to get your brains beat out. It helps that we’re playing a really good football team in terms of that and I think the guys are mature enough to handle it,” Golesh said.
In some ways, the Florida game will define USF’s season. You’re on the road in a hostile environment after a big win. Good teams move on. This is today. Forget yesterday, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The Bulls don’t have to beat Florida, but they must go in believing that they can. They have to believe in themselves, because if they collapse here, if they get knocked out, last week’s dominant win over Boise may look good, but it will mean nothing.
PAT’S PICKS
Florida over USF: The Gators are skating on thin ice here. If USF plays up to its potential, this could be a slugfest.
Miami over Bethune-Cookman: Why do teams even schedule games like this?
FSU over East Texas A&M: See Miami over B-C.
UCF over North Carolina A&T: This isn’t as bad as the other two, because UCF isn’t nearly as good as the other two, but it’s still a game that shouldn’t be played.
Last week, 2-3. For the season, 2-3,.400.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 29, 2025 |
The game was sluggish from the start, like two heavyweights trying to land punches with their feet stuck in cement.
South Florida had eked out a 10-7 halftime lead, but there was no indication that would stand up, not against a Boise State team which is considered the Alabama of the Group of Five, had just been in the College Football Playoffs and had everyone wondering how long it would take before it asserted its dominance.
Maybe now, midway through the third quarter with USF in a punting situation, fourth-and-6 at the Boise 45, the Broncos would take control. Out came the USF punt team. The ball was snapped and then something unexpected happened.
The punter was not the punter. Instead, it was freshman quarterback Locklan Hewlett, a player of much promise but not someone who figured prominently for the Bulls this year.
And Hewlett did not punt. Instead, he looked downfield, where USF’s Keyshaun Singleton had gotten behind the Boise defense and was streaking toward the end zone. Hewlett lofted the ball. Down the field it flew, into the waiting arms of Singleton, who grabbed it and took it in for a score.
And just like that, it was USF 17, Boise 7. On the sidelines, Byrum Brown knew. “As soon as he (Hewlett) threw it, I started running toward the (end) zone,” Brown said according to the USF football website. This was a game changer. It would wake up the dormant USF offense; Brown would wake up the dormant USF offense.
Brown would be the guy of whom Boise coach Spencer Danielson said “he will be one of the best football players we see all year, on either side of the ball. I’m not just talking about being one of the best quarterbacks we will see, he’s one of the best football players we will see during the 2025 season,” Danielson emphasized.
The fake punt was, no doubt, the biggest play of the game. It invigorated USF, gave it a fresh rush of adrenalin which woke up the offense and let it overwhelm Boise.
It could be the biggest play of the year if USF capitalizes on the opportunity it created. With the win, USF now has a legitimate path to the CFP; not an easy path, but a legitimate one no matter what happens against Florida and Miami.
And, if USF can pull that off, get to the playoffs, then it could arguably be the biggest play in USF history.
For the last two years under Coach Alex Golesh, USF has been a dormant volcano. There has been some smoke and fire, a lot of rumbling, enough going on to grab your attention while Golesh put his plan in place, but no real eruption.
He has stressed believing in the process, that this team’s ability to move up the football ladder depends not only in believing in themselves but believing in what they can do as a team, independent of the coaches’ urging. The players must lead, not the coaches. The coaches are there to guide the process and install the system.
“I’ve said it ad nauseam to our team, until it becomes player driven it will not break out and I felt like tonight (Thursday) it was truly player driven,” Golesh said.
“Ultimately, when you truly believe in each other you truly have a brotherhood which is really, really hard to do in college football right now,” Golesh said.
“You’re going to play for the guy next to you and you don’t want to let him down. They’ve (his players) bought into that, they’ve worked that way,” Golesh commented. “I thought we were physically ready, I thought we were mentally ready and we put it all together tonight (Thursday).”
“It’s a new standard, a new expectation (for this team),” Brown declared. “This ain’t the same old South Florida anymore.” Hey there up in Gainesville, you hear that?
