Syracuse +7 3.3% play
Syracuse was a 19.5 point favorite on the road against Liberty to open the 2019 season, and won 24-0, and are now a 6.5 point home dog. That’s a 30+ point adjustment in under 2 years. I just think its far too much I don’t care how Syracuse has played and how great Liberty has played. Last year Liberty came here and did not have any crowd to deal with and although they won 38-21, they relied on 3 explosive TD’s to get there. Syracuse through 3 games is 3rd in the nation having only allowed 18 plays of 10+ yards. They also held Liberty to 3-12 on third down, but Liberty was able to convert both 4th down plays, but were just 2-4 in the red zone. Syracuse defense looks much improved this year they are only allowing 1.8 ypc, and they’ll have 30,000+ fans backing them up in this spot against a team that is on the fringe of being ranked again.
Liberty has shown some issues in protecting do it all QB Malik Willis allowing 3 sacks per game, and that just does not translate well on the road in a very noisy environment on a short week. Liberty is actually worse than Syracuse at protecting the QB, and the home field advantage should certainly make a big difference. Remember there were 0 fans here in last year’s game. Malik Willis has been great, but his home/away splits are not great. He has 20 passing TD’s 1 INT at home, and on the road he has 8 TDs to 5 INT’s, and he has not started on the road in front of a crowd more than 4,000 people. There will be over 30,000 at the Carrier Dome Friday night where Syracuse has upset Clemson in recent years.
Both teams want to run the ball and both teams have done a great job at running and stopping the run, against a weak strength of schedule. I think Taj Harris coming back for Syracuse at WR could be the difference tonight as Syracuse gets the upset.
