SMU +3.5 3.3% PLAY
Luke Fickell is an excellent coach and his team is coming off a bye, but that’s all in the line here in my opinion. This spread is as if this is last year’s Cinicinnati team, but they lost several players to the NFL, including two starting CB’s in Cobe Bryant and Sauce Gardner. It appears they haven’t skipped a beat ranking 4th in ypp, but they have faced an average opponent ypp offense ranking 85.8. There are red flags too as they haven’t been forcing turnovers ranking 92nd, and their third down defense ranks 109th while their rn defense ranks 76th in epa. I just don’t know how good this Cinci team is, and they were +1 dog here in 2020 when there were no fans.
I get it SMU lost 3 straight games and appear not to be as good as they were with Sonny Dykes, but that 3 game stretch vs. Maryland, TCU, and UCF as those teams are a combined 16-3, and SMU played two of those games on the road. SMU was actually a 2.5 home dog to TCU, are we saying Cincinnati is better than TCU right now? I don’t know that they are especially 1 point better over a key number of 3, which is really saying they are a lot better. Do we put Cincinnati -2.5 on a neutral vs. TCU? I don’t think so.
Cinci before their bye really struggled at home, and I question what this team has on offense. Ben Bryant was concussed in the 4th quarter, but that was before they trailed at home to South Florida 24-21. He’s back for this game, but the first game after a concussion is always a bit shaky, and I think SMU can take advantage. Cinci also played a road game at Tulsa, but came away with a 10 point win, which looking back at Tulsa got smashed the next week by Navy by 30 points. SMU just dominated Navy a week ago had a 40-20 lead in the 4th quarter before they took the foot off the gas allowing Navy to score 2 TD’s in the final 2 minutes for the back door cover.
