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Last Week: 3-2
Overall: 26-24
Lock of the Week: 8-2
Boston College at Florida State (-21)
Steve Addazio has been hyping up Florida State all week and putting them in the same category as top ten teams Clemson and Louisville. While the ‘Noles are a very good team they aren’t quite playing at the level of their ACC Atlantic counterparts right now. Aside from already losing to Clemson and Louisville, FSU is allowing 9 points more than Louisville and 13 points more than Clemson in ACC play this year. On top of that, FSU is scoring a full two touchdowns less per game than Clemson and three touchdowns less than Louisville per game in conference play.
Still, FSU is still many levels above BC, especially on offense. Dating back to the beginning of last season, BC is averaging only 11.5 points per game in ACC play and scored 20 or more only twice. Basically FSU needs to hit about 34 points in this game to cover the spread and they average 25 ppg in ACC play. Considering Louisville hung 52 on BC (6 more than its ACC average) and Clemson hung 56 on BC (16 more than its ACC average) I think that the ‘Noles can get to 34 and cover the spread.
Ohio State at Maryland (+30)
At this time of year everyone loves riding the favorites especially the teams that are in the playoff picture. After playing sluggish football for about a month straight the Buckeyes throttled Nebraska last weekend, 62-3. Also last weekend Maryland was hammered by Michigan, 59-3.
A lot of times in college football things have a way of evening out a bit the week after a blowout. I’m going to get strapped in for this one with the mindset that Maryland’s offense is good enough to put up 21-24 points in this one and they keep it within three touchdowns.
USC at Washington (-8)
The Trojans have been on a big run lately winning five in a row after dropping the first three games of the year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that four of those five games were at home, with the only road win coming at lowly Arizona. Also, of the five wins only Colorado is on pace to finish the year with a winning record. In other words, USC has been beating up on the cream puffs of the PAC12.
Washington has been plowing down the PAC12 this year, especially at home where they beat Stanford 44-6 and Oregon State 41-17. USC is much better than those teams but I think USC’s swagger gets broken early in this game like it did against ‘Bama way back in week one and the Huskies win by 10+ points.
Northwestern (-13) at Purdue
I’m not going to lie, it was pretty tough to find five games with the slate of games that was out there this week which is how I ended up taking a game between two teams with a losing record.
If you’ve followed my picks recently then you know that the Wildcats are a lot better than their 4-5 record indicates. They have won 4-of-7 games and two of the losses came to OSU and Wisconsin. In both games they were within a touchdown or less in the 4th quarter. Also, Northwestern has shown it can win on the road as it has two road wins over MSU (by 14) and Iowa (by 7) this year. The Wildcats will find a way to win this one by two touchdowns and get back to .500
Lock of the Week
Tulsa at Navy (+2)
Tulsa has been on a bit of a run lately as they have hung up 45 or more points in the last three straight games. The Golden Hurricanes do have one weakness though in that they can’t stop the run. In conference play Tulsa is allowing 194 yards per game and 4.6 yards per carry on the ground. If you take that a step further they haven’t even played the #1 rushing offense Navy, the #2 rushing offense USF or the #5 rushing offense Temple. Throw in the fact that Tulsa is the #3 rushing offense in the conference and you can see that the defense has been allowing some big numbers on the ground to the bottom half of the league’s rushing teams.
Obviously those are some ugly numbers when you have to go up and play the option attack of Navy. With a win, Navy would be the only AAC West School with only one loss and would control its destiny for the divisional title. The Midshipmen win outright at home.