College Football Season Prop Recap: Week Two

Coming into week two, we were riding high with Washington and Florida State and maybe a little bit concerned about Tennessee and Oklahoma. Given the level of competition our four teams were facing this weekend, it was really crucial that we ended the day with four big ("statement") wins. 

And we did. 

Oklahoma 59, Louisiana Monroe 17

Florida State 52, Charleston Southern 8

Washington 59, Idaho 14

Three games against non-power-conference schools, one combined score of 170-39. Obviously these three games were always supposed to be lopsided, but it's reassuring that none of them had any semblance of a scare this weekend. 

Let's take a look at some of the highlight performers, bullet-style:

• Oklahoma's Baker Mayfield and Austin Kendall combined for 352 yards and 5 touchdowns (Mayfield sat out the second half because it was such a blowout)
• Oklahoma's Joe Mixon and Abdul Adams ran for 117 and 91 yards respectively, and Samaje Perine had 58 yards and 2 touchdowns
• Oklahoma completed passed to 12 different receivers
• Florida State's Deondre Francois threw for 262 yards and 3 touchdown (with 1 interception)
• FSU's Dalvin Cook (Future Heisman Trophy Finalist) ran for 83 yards and 2 touchdowns
• Florida State's Travis Rudolph caught 7 passes for 105 yards and 2 touchdowns
• FSU's Jesus Wilson ran a punt back 89 yards for a touchdown
• Washington's Jake Browning threw for 295 yards and 5 touchdowns
• Here are the Huskies who caught touchdown passes: John Ross (2), Dante Pettis (2), Chico McClatcher, Quinten Pounds
• Chico McClatcher and Quinten Pounds. Just back in the glow of those names
• The Oklahoma and Washington kickers both kicked 8 extra points, and the Florida State kicker kicked 7 extra points

Confidence Level: Pretty Gosh Darn High for all three of these teams

It's really easy to pick out guys who had good days from these three games, because they were competing against significantly inferior talent. But what about the last team on our list? Tennessee was the only team to play against a power-conference team:

Tennessee 45, Virginia Tech 24

No problem. Granted, Va Tech kind of stinks now, but Tennessee rebounded nicely from their Week One struggles against Appalachian State. 

Josh Dobbs threw for just 91 yards, but he had 3 passing touchdowns, 105 rushing yards, and 2 rushing touchdowns. Jalen Hurd added 99 yards on 22 carries, and that was basically enough for the Vols to sink the Hokies. 

The most important stat of this game was the turnover battle. Dobbs threw an interception, but Virginia Tech lost FIVE fumbles. That is absolutely not something that will happen when Tennessee starts facing SEC competition, and the scoreboard would look a whole hell of a lot different if the Hokies has turned even two of those five into points. 

Confidence Level: Still Kind Of Low But Certainly Not As Low As Last Week

College Football Season Prop Recap: Week One

This day in the office is an absolutely must for any "Worst Work Days Of The Year" list. I'm basically nursing a four day hangover where all I drank was Bud Light and all I ate was eggs and cheesesteaks. There's a ton of work leftover from when I left at 2:30 on Friday, and an extra day's worth of shit to deal with from the long weekend.

But at least we had football this weekend, right?

As a reminder, we went with four season props this year. We bet the following teams to win their divisions (not conferences, other than Oklahoma because the Big XII has no divisions):

• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Washington
• Florida State

So we kicked off the weekend with Tennessee needing overtime to beat a Division 2 school, and then followed that up with Oklahoma losing to Houston. Then Washington blew out Rutgers and Florida State had their miracle second half and snuck a win away from Ole Miss. Let's do some deep dives:

Tennessee 20, Appalachian State 13 (OT)

Josh Dobbs was supposed to be the big swinging dick, best quarterback in the SEC, savior that steamrolled Tennessee to the SEC East championship. He kicked off his season with a 55% completion percentage, a single touchdown, an interception, and a QBR of 26.3. 

And this was against a Sun Belt team! App State is no longer Division 1-FCS, but they're still a team that should not be capable of taking a potential SEC Division Champion to overtime. 

Running back Jalen Hurd had a decent stat sheet - 28 carries, 110 yards, 1 touchdown. But he only averaged 3.9 yards per carry. What's going to happen when he's not playing against Future Enterprise Rent-A-Car Employees?

Confidence Level: Kind Of Low 

Oklahoma 23, Houston 33

This game, in retrospect, was all about field position. Both quarterbacks threw for 300+ yards and two touchdowns, both teams had decent but not great rushing attacks, and both offenses avoided turnovers. 

But Houston kicked four field goals and Oklahoma kicked one, and that's the whole game. 

Here's how the rest of the Big XII did: 

• Lost: Kansas State (Stanford), Iowa State (Northern Iowa)
• Beat A Shitty Team: Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Texas Tech
• Beat A Decent Team: West Virginia (Mizzou)
• Beat A Ranked Team: Texas (Notre Dame)

Confidence Level: Kind Of Low

Washington 48, Rutgers 13

Obviously, blowing out a power five team in the home opener is a great start. But Rutgers kind of stinks at football, so I'm going to try to temper my expectations here. 

Statistically, just about every aspect of this Huskies game was solid. Here are the nitpicky things that I see that could have been better:

• Jake Browning threw an interception. There, that one was easy. 
• Darrell Daniels dropped a touchdown pass. That's not good. 
• John Ross caught two touchdowns and ran a kick back for a third, but didn't score any touchdowns on punt returns. There's some room for improvement in his game. 
• Rutgers' quarterback is from Long Island and the Huskies only picked him off one time. 

This was a really tough exercise. Ross didn't score on a punt return because he doesn't return punts. Yeah, they only got one interception, but Brandon Beaver ran it back 46 yards and they scored on the next play. 

Washington looks good, and they're going to have to crush Idaho and Portland State the next two weeks if we're going to keep that good feeling going into the Arizona-Stanford-Oregon portion of the schedule. 

Confidence Level: Pretty Gosh Darn High

Florida State 45, Ole Miss 34

I wrote this game off just before halftime and went to bed. My alarm at 6:15 comes early, and I figured 28-6 was basically sheets for FSU last night and for the season.

And then, magic happened. 

Touchdown. Field goal. Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. Three more field goals in the fourth quarter sealed the deal, and somehow Florida State is not dead today. 

Freshman Deondre Francois threw for 400 yards and no interceptions, boom that's what we need from him. 

Future Heisman Winner Dalvin Cook ran for just 91 yards and was help out of the end zone, but he chipped in with 100 receiving yards. With Dalvin, you know he's going to get featured somehow. Totaling almost 200 yards against the most stout defense he'll face all year is a great place to start his Heisman campaign. 

The 'Nole defense picking off Chad Kelly three times was enormous, and really that defense in the third quarter allowed them to mount their comeback. 

And, last but not least, Ricky "Sticky Icky" Aguayo was 3/3 on extra points and 6/6 on field goals. If you had the kid in Fanduel, you ended up with 16 points and that was probably enough for you to win. 

Oh and Clemson only scored 19 points to sneak a win away from Auburn. 

Confidence Level: Pretty Gosh Darn High

Week 7 College Football Preview: Louisville @ Florida State

Last night, we were considering a parlay of Auburn -1.5, Atlanta -4, and the Mets moneyline. We decided not to bet it because parlays are stupid. We thought it would be smarter to just bet them separately. We got Atlanta into Bovada. Then their system froze or crashed or something and we couldn't place Auburn, and we kind of just forgot about the Mets.

Well Atlanta lost so we lost that money. Auburn covered and the Mets won, and we got dick to show for it.

Fucking great!

Lots of big games this weekend, let's break down some notable ones:

Louisville @ Florida State (-7.5), 12:00

What Louisville does well: Rushing. Like a lot of college teams, the Cards rely more on the run than they do on the pass. They've run for 11 touchdowns and thrown for just 5 (with 7 interceptions). They ran for 3 touchdowns when they beat Auburn, 2 when they lost to Houston, 1 when they lost to Clemson, and 1 when they beat NC State.

On the other side of the rushing game, Louisville's run defense is solid when it counts. They held Auburn to 2 touchdowns on 41 attempts, Houston to 0 touchdowns on 57 (!!) attempts, Clemson to 0 touchdowns on 40 attempts, and NC State to 1 touchdown on 30 attempts.

The Cards also defend against the pass moderately well. They had 3 interceptions against Auburn and 2 against Clemson, and they picked off Houston's Greg Ward once even though he pretty much torched them.

Florida State wants to run the ball, and there is really no denying it. They've gone for over 1000 yards through their first five games, led by Dark Horse Heisman Candidate Dalvin Cook Who Was Found Not Guilty For Allegedly Punching That Woman Outside Of That Bar and his 792 yards. Cook averages 9.0 yards per carry and has already score 8 touchdowns.

Before last week against NC State, Louisville had been giving up 4-5 yards per carry (and about a yard more than that to "feature backs"). Last week they held NC State's "feature back" Matthew Dayes to 68 yards on 19 attempts (3.6 yards per carry). Dayes isn't an elite back, but he has 10 touchdowns on the year - granted, it's against subpar competition.

Louisville isn't going to be able to contain Dalvin. They make keep him under 100 yards (doubtful), and they might even keep him out of the endzone (even more doubtful), but even if they do they will have to commit too much manpower and Everett Golson will add to his perfect 8 touchdown-0 interception stat line for the season. Tease if you have to because they're definitely winning, but I like FSU -7 (-120, buying the half a point).