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Last Week Recap

N/A

NCAA Football Week 0 Official Play Write-Ups

UTEP/Jacksonville State Over 51.5 (-110) (Caesars)
Risking 3.30 Units to win 3.00 Units
Posted: 6/23 @ 11:55 AM

Books are finally starting to hang totals and I’m going to jump on this one now as 52 is kind of a key number in college football and I want to make sure I’m under it. As a point of comparison, DK is currently at 52.5 & FD is currently at 53.5.

There has been a lot of talk about the new clock rules in NCAA Football (clocks running on first downs except for the last few minutes of each half) and how they will affect totals. Lots of people think they will be really smart betting unders early in the year, but I promise the books are aware of this too. Consensus seems to be that these rules would have shortened games by about 7 total plays/game last year. What remains to be seen is how coaches will adjust to these rules. I’m sure some will just speed things up a little bit to try and run the same amount of plays as they ran last year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see people over react to these rules early with tons of under bets that may not be as sharp as they think they are. That remains to be seen I guess. We’ll see.

On to the game….

UTEP is a team that has a history of relying on the big play offensively. Their explosive play ranking consistently outranks their Offensive EPA & Success Rate ranking. Last year they ranked 86th in offensive EPA, 75th in Success Rate but jumped all the way to 52nd in explosive plays. The Jacksonville State defense followed a similar pattern. Their FCS stats would have ranked here in last year’s FBS: Defensive EPA 34th, Success Rate 24th, but Defensive Explosive Plays falls all the way to 119th.

This wasn’t just a one year sample size for UTEP either. In 2021 it was even more drastic: Their offense was #2 in explosive plays vs only 7th in EPA/drive. I really like this in an offense when you are betting the over. Don’t waste times with long drives. Either hit a big play or punt the ball back to Rich Rod’s explosive Jax State offense.

UTEP returns a very veteran QB in Gavin Hardison who has a real gunslinger mentality. He was the QB for both those seasons I referenced above and HC Dana Dimel was the coach for both those seasons as well. This is the way they play and it should be more of the same last year. They just got their big play WR Tyrin Smith back as well. He was going to transfer to Texas A&M but pulled back recently and is going back to UTEP. If Jax State’s defense was only 119th vs an FCS schedule last season than I would expect this UTEP offense to be able to hit on their far share of big plays vs them.

On the other side of the ball you can almost always count on a Rich Rodriguez offense to put up points. They played at a pace that would have ranked in the Top 35 in the FBS last year and put up 36 points per game last year. Their explosiveness would have ranked 22nd in the FBS last year (granted against an FCS schedule) but the UTEP defense follows a similar pattern to their offense where they are more susceptible to the big play: 92 in defensive EPA, 73 in defensive success rate, but 114th in defensive explosive plays. This was similar to 2021 where they ranked 25th in defensive EPA/drive but fell all the way to 68th in explosive plays.

I think this will be a back and forth game with both teams hitting their fair share of big plays and Jacksonville State playing fast with their Rich Rod offense. They have a very crowded QB room but have a 7th-year returning starter coming back, so whoever ends up winning the job should be qualified. They should be fired up playing at home in their first ever FBS game. I think Rich Rod will have the offense dialed up and the UTEP offense will be able to get theirs as well. I see this as a 31-24 type game.

6.5 Teaser (-115) (Fan Duel)
UMass @ New Mexico State (-2)
Hawaii @ Vanderbilt (-11)
Risking 3.45 Units to win 3.00 Units
Posted: 6/30 @ 5:14 PM

I don’t like to play a ton of teasers in CFB because of how high variance the sport is, but this one seems solid. We are crossing (or getting to) several key numbers with both legs: 2 (2.58%), 3 (9.09%), 4 (3.47%), 6 (2.97%), 7 (7.62%) & 8 (2.3%) with the NMST leg & 14 (4.22%), 17 (3.33%), 11 (2.2%) & 13 (1.68%) with the Vandy leg.

I wrote about UMass some in the Week 1 thread when I bet against them vs Auburn. There isn’t too much to add here. They were 130th last year in offensive EPA & 133rd in offensive success rate. On defense they gave up a ton of explosive plays last year (#121 in rushing explosive plays & #131 in passing explosive plays). Team’s ran the ball 60% of the time against them last year because they didn’t really need to throw the ball. But they did lose 2 of their best DB’s this offseason.

NMST got a lot better as the season went on last year. They started the season 0-4, but went on a 7-2 run to close out the season which included a bowl win vs Bowling Green. They have some nice momentum heading into this season. Their returning QB, Diego Pavia, was #1 in QBR the last 5 weeks of the season. They return 70% of their OL this year which will be big against that soft UMass run defense and they we’re 9th in the Nation in offensive explosive plays last season which is a strength that plays right into one of UMass’s several weaknesses. Jerry Kill is doing a good job of turning this program around, and I like them to win this one at home against a weaker opponent.

Vanderbilt beat Hawaii 63-10 on the Island last year in a game where they topped 600 total yards & 400 rushing yards. It was an absolute dominant performance. Now they get this game at home and in my opinion they are a much better team now than they were at that point. AJ Swann wasn’t even playing QB for that yet. He didn’t take over until mid-September and posted a 10-2 TD-INT ratio as a Freshmen. Vandy finished the season strong with wins over Kentucky & Florida in their L3 games.

Hawaii was really bad last season, particularly on defense. Despite playing in a pretty weak MW conference they ranked just 120th in defensive EPA, 114th in defensive success rate & 126th in YPP. I think this will be another tough year for them and they are really going to struggle with this SEC opponent. Vanderbilt can’t take any games for granted and I would expect them to poor it on again like they did last year. Hawaii did nothing to narrow the gap from last season vs Vanderbilt this offseason. In fact, I would argue that Vanderbilt lengthened the gap and get this game at home. I’m not saying they will win by 50 again, but I feel very good that they will win by 2 TD’s again.

UMass @ New Mexico State TT Over 26.5 (-106) (Fan Duel)
Risking 3.18 Units to win 3.00 Units
Posted: 8/22 @ 6:06 PM

I already wrote about this game in the Teaser writeup above, so I don’t have too much to add here. The UMass Defense gave up 27+ points to 8 of the 11 FBS teams they faced last season. This year they lose two key players from that unit: Jalen Mackie & Marcus Cushine for combined for 28 TFL & 9 sacks last year. The New Mexico State offense really came on down the stretch last year. That’s encouraging since it was HC Jerry Kill’s first year with the team so it’s good to see improvement as the year went on. Down the stretch last year NMST QB Diego Pavia had a 13-2 TD-INT ratio & 62% completion % and also had really nice numbers on the ground. The schedule was pretty soft but UMass also qualifies as “soft” in my opinion. Pavia had a great game @ Liberty going 16-for-21 for 214 with 3 TD & 0 INT as well as 20 rushes for 125 yards. He really came into his own down the stretch. With this being Kill’s second season and Pavia ending the year so strongly, I think we can see another jump here from this offense.

Audric Estime (ND) Over 77.5 Rush Yds (-115) vs Navy (Draft Kings)
Risking 2.30 Units to win 2.00 Units
Posted: 8/23 @ 5:07 PM

Estime led the Irish in rushing last year with 920 yards on 156 carries (5.9 ypc) despite splitting carries. Logan Diggs was actually #1 on the team with 165 carries but he transferred out. Chris Tyree had 100 carries of his own last season but they moved him to slot WR. This year it looks like Estime’s backfield. I like him to go for 100 yards here. The practice reports have been impressive:

Official Plays – Week 0

UTEP/Jacksonville State Over 51.5 (-110) (Caesars)
Risking 3.30 Units to win 3.00 Units

6.5 PT Teaser (-115) (Fan Duel)
UMass @ New Mexico State (-2)
Hawaii @ Vanderbilt (-11)
Risking 3.45 Units to win 3.00 Units

UMass @ New Mexico St TT Over 26.5 (-106) (Fan Duel)
Risking 3.18 Units to win 3.00 Units

Audric Estime (ND) Over 77.5 Rush Yds (-115) vs Navy (Draft Kings)
Risking 2.30 Units to win 2.00 Units