Good morning everyone! Here's what news we ✨snagged✨ for you around the world of football today:

🚪 Hard Knocks Premiere

🤯 Blockbuster Deal

🚀 ...and much more! Let's get into it.

👑 Main Character

Football fans: the NFL is officially back!

Hard Knocks usually signifies the return of football, and with last night’s premiere, it’s officially time to buckle down for the next six months to see where this 2023-24 NFL season is headed.

The New York Jets haven’t had this much hype since, well, maybe never. The addition of Aaron Rodgers has sent fan expectations through the clouds, and for good reason. The J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets have long struggled to find a quarterback suited for the postseason, and while Rodgers may not have the trophies to show for it, he’s had his fair share of experience in the playoffs. And it’s certainly more than this team has had in the past couple of decades (no, Mark Sanchez does not count).

Episode one featured a lot of Rodgers, and a lot of Sauce. Take a peek at some of the best moments from last night’s premiere.

🎥 Can Sauce become a HOF’er one day? Rodgers seems to think so.

🎥 The QB/DB duo have developed quite the fun handshake.

🎥 Head coach Robert Saleh takes ‘coach speak’ to the next level with this analogy.

Tune in Tuesday nights to catch each and every episode of Hard Knocks as we lead into the regular season of play. It’s up to you whether or not you want to hop on the hype train that is the New York Jets, but with a stacked AFC, it seems like all of this hype may be for nought soon enough…

🐣 Tweet of the Day

The current landscape of college sports is continuing to implode.

After many many moves that have seen the Pac-12 essentially evaporate into thin air, other conferences are vying for the opportunity to add top end schools to the mix. Now, Stanford, California, and potentially SMU are being rumored to bunk up with the ACC. Whether this formulates into something real is tbd, but with the past week or so that college football, and all of college athletics has had, nothing is surprising anymore.

💰 Mr. Covers’ Corner

A BIG announcement yesterday shook up the sports media/betting world, so you knew Mr. Covers was going to give us his thoughts one way or the other. With ESPN branching into the world of gambling, it’s safe to say there is a bit of skepticism surrounding the move.

Considering the vast variety of factors, ESPN A-lister Stephen A. Smith is all of us after the announcement. Take it away Covers!

Don’t get me wrong, I get the initial idea of ESPN having a sportsbook as being cool. However, there are a lot of ways that this impacts gambling outside of their being a new book replacing the Barstool Sportsbook.

ESPN having insiders such as Woj and Schefter is arguably the biggest part of this. Both hold access to a large amount of information that can move lines. When Shams signed with FanDuel, it was one thing, but he only has access to NBA information. ESPN prides themselves as being “the world wide leader in sports”. Well, the world wide leader has world wide access to information across every major and minor sport in the business, which is massive for the gambling community.

Let's say in next year's NBA Draft, Woj gets information that Player A is going to be taken first overall. Hypothetically, he then puts out a tweet that says that Player B is going to be taken first overall just to have more people invest in Player B so that ESPN can make more money. Or, say Schefty reports that Justin Jefferson is out for a game, and then suddenly, Jefferson is out on the field. IT’S FISHY.

I'm not saying that this will happen, I'm just saying that the merger of PENN and ESPN opens themselves up to accusations like this. Ultimately, I think they will be fine, but there will be hesitancy when it comes to people joining ESPN Bet in its first year.

🥊 Quick Hits

• Kareem Hunt seems to have honed in on two potential landing spots: the Colts and the Saints.

• Netflix’s newest “Untold” features the wild ride that former Heisman Johnny Manziel went on during his time in college. A must watch.

• 35 QBs were named to the Davey O’Brien watch list. The group of names might surprise you.

• Fantasy football is here everyone. Get your mock draft on now!

• Maybe with ESPN’s new deal they can bring back their GOAT layout

Want More from Snagged?

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram as we try to keep up with news from all over the football world!

Liked what you read? Tell a friend and let them know you just ✨snagged✨ one of the newest and most awesome football newsletters you've seen!