Washington -3 -115 5.5% NCAAF POD
This line dropped tonight, and I think it may be a setup for buy back. I don’t expect it to get to 2.5 or anything so I’m fine paying the extra 5% to grab -3 now. It’s not often that you have a P5 team with more motivation, but that is exactly what we have here. Washington at 7-5, did not have a great year, but they played extremely well when they were supposed to. They had double digit leads in the second half against Oregon and Utah, beat USC by 10, and crushed a BYU team that Boise lost to. This will be Chris Peterson’s last game as a head coach, and there are no distractions as they have named the DC Jeremy Lake as the replacement. Even more motivating is the fact that Washington faced Peterson’s former team Boise. Boise State, on the other hand at 12-1 does not want to be back in Vegas. Their head coach has already made several statements about the MWC needing to do a better job marketing itself so it can get better bowls, and he did interview for several P5 jobs. He’s also going to be calling the plays as OC Zak Hill took the same job at Arizona State.
When we look at the X’s and O’s you can look at the common opponent BYU, but I look at the fact that Boise has not faced many top defenses. They faced one team in the top 50 in pass defense, and that was Wyoming who held them to 20 points on their own field. Wyoming lost that game because they have no offensive balance, which is not a problem Washington has. Wyoming’s great defensive #’s have also come against an average offense ranking 91st in YPP, while Washington’s have come against an average YPP offense ranking 46th. Their 31st pass defense has come against an average passing offense ranking 46th so this team is battle tested. The only other time Boise faced a defense similar to Washington was Marshall, and again Marshall had a far trip to play on a short week and held Boise to 14 points at home in their own building. I think Boise and this conference is overrated, and the #’s back it up when you look at the fact that the Mountain West went 7-11 ATS vs. other G5 conferences and were -3.7 mov ATS, which was the biggest gap of the G5 conferences. Meanwhile the PAC12 which gets a lot of shit was actually very good this year they went 5-3 ATS vs. P5, and they also went 10-7 ATS vs. G5.
Washington will be playing this game without their LT, and TE, but they have depth, and their young defense which has played so well will have the extra time to prepare which can only help them. We saw signs of Washington being that top tier team in the PAC12 several times, and Jacob Eason looks the part with a big arm, and Washington the better team in TO margin, and special teams in this match up. They have the motivation, and the better coach, and they have faced a far superior schedule, with a blowout against Boise State’s only loss on the schedule.
