Saturday: Week 11 gameday chat featuring Jason Kirk

Let's try out some new features and watch some football together during the early slate of Saturday games.

One of the exciting things about our move to Substack is that this platform has some great features we didn’t have before—like a great live chat room. We’ve already found it to be a good way to field questions for Q&As, and now we’re going to do something fun: a gameday chat for Saturday’s noon Eastern games.

Paid subscribers (which still includes everyone who was a subscriber when we made the move from Patreon) can participate in the chat thread in the Substack app or on desktop. We’ll open up commenting right around kickoff, and we’ll all get to enjoy some football together. We expect that all three SZD hosts will at least pop in, and we will also have our friend Jason Kirk of the Shutdown Fullcast and The Athletic. Jason has a great newsletter that we highly recommend you check out. He is also just, objectively, a fun hang on Saturdays. So we’ll hang. There is no truth to any rumor that Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh will also join the live chat.

Thanks and kudos to everyone who’s already extended their subscription beyond December 3, when old monthly subscriptions will expire. You can use the button below to subscribe. If you’re an existing subscriber from our time on Patreon, just use the same email you did then, and you won’t be charged until December. All subscribers can save by signing up annually and getting a free month. A monthly subscription costs $10.

And, really, it’s a great deal. The move to Substack has already helped us enrich what we can offer you, and our plan is to sharpen our swords going forward. In case you missed some of what we’ve been up to in our first week on Substack:

• Last Friday: We opened with The Eyes List, a big update on the state of the coach carousel. You can expect many more episodes like this as silly season ramps up. (👀)

• Earlier this week, Richard interviewed Cody Alexander of MatchQuarters about 2023’s big defining trends in defense. It’s a great listen and very relevant as the season goes into the stretch drive.

• Alex interviewed some UGA football experts about the dominant program of the moment, Athens, and if there’s a better way of understanding Kirby Smart.

• Alex broke the newsletter seal with a pretty beefy Q&A on a bunch of teams and coaches. We’re now giving you CFB newsletters in addition podcasts. Sometimes those will be mailbags. Sometimes they’ll be columns or reporting of various lengths. We are excited about bringing SZD to the written word, not just audio.