... Two Saturdays into the season the market finally has film to work with, and it is still setting numbers off the parts of the roster that made the preseason magazine. The useful question right now is not which team is...
... Two Saturdays into the season the market finally has film to work with, and it is still setting numbers off the parts of the roster that made the preseason magazine. The useful question right now is not which team is better, it is who is actually going to be on the field Saturday and if the chaos of college sports has kicked off just two weeks into the regular season. Here are my favorite Week 2 college football bets. Remember to check out my early Week 2 wagers article from Monday as well. The over case in this game writes itself, as Marshall couldn't have looked worse in its 45-0 opening game loss to Penn State — there is nowhere to go but up. Middle Tennessee just hung 38 on Murray State, and Conference USA totals in the high 50s cash all the time. These are two teams that want to run, so the market tossing this one in the high 50's makes sense … until you dive into the numbers. Marshall head coach Tony Gibson has spent his entire career building defenses, from the aggressive 3-3-5 he perfected at West Virginia to the NC State unit that finished No. 2 in the ACC in scoring defense and put him on the 2021 Broyles Award ballot as one of the best assistant coaches in the country. Derek Mason walks in from the other sideline carrying the same resume with defensive coordinator stops at Stanford, Auburn and Oklahoma State, wrapped around seven seasons as the head coach at Vanderbilt. Middle Tennessee's identity in the opener was the ground game, rushing for 196 yards with Antonio Martin and Terrence Brown combining for 170 of them. Mason also brought in 50 newcomers this offseason, including four new starters on the offensive line, and new O-lines do not tend to produce fast, clean, chunk-play football in the second week of a season. Marshall's side is simpler. Penn State held them to 147 yards of total offense, and while that says less than the scoreboard does against the 18th-ranked team in the country, you are still looking at a rebuilt roster that has not yet shown it can move the ball at all. The genuinely encouraging number from that night belonged to Gibson's defense, which held Penn State to 3.6 yards per carry. His complaint afterward was not the base defense, it was the big plays. Our score-expectations model lands this game at 50.9 points, with Marshall winning it 31.2 to 19.7. One honest caveat, because both box scores here are noise: A 45-0 loss to a top-20 team tells you very little, and 38 points against an FCS opponent tells you less than that. I am not leaning on either result. I am leaning on two defensive head coaches, a run-first visitor with a brand-new offensive line, and a home team that still has to prove it can score. Bet: Under 57 (-110) Hawaii at home in the last window of the night is a real edge, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The run-and-shoot can put points up in a hurry: QB Micah Alejado was the Mountain West Freshman of the Year a year ago after throwing for 3,106 yards and 24 touchdowns, and when on he can be electric late night TV. But an injury last week may limit that excitement. Alejado hurt his ankle against Arizona early last season and missed two games, came back to finish the year, then left the Hawai'i Bowl against California and that same ankle cost him spring ball. Then last week he went down in the third quarter, got up without putting any weight on his left leg, missed a snap and came right back in, and Hawaii managed just three more points the rest of the way, Alejado missed practice Tuesday as a "precautionary" measure with the left calf heavily taped, Timmy Chang insisting he is only getting rest and that "he'll be ready to go Saturday". However, through two games this season he is 48-of-92 for 448 yards with two touchdowns, under five yards per attempt in a system that is supposed to live on explosive plays. Bet New Mexico State +7.5 (at Hawai'i) now at sportsbooks It's not only him, either, because leading Ranbow Warriors receiver Pofele Ashlock still hasn't been medically cleared with a knee injury, running back Cam Barfield has missed the last seven quarters with an ankle of his own and three offensive line starters graduated out of a group whose replacements are still sorting out their continuity. That leaves a passing offense without its best target, without its best back and without the interior it needs to hold up long enough for those routes to ever come open, and that version of this team has produced 27 points at Stanford and six at home against UNLV without ever reaching the end zone. That isn't a slump — that's a personnel problem. Now put New Mexico State's front across from that line. The Aggies list 19 defensive linemen averaging 265 pounds, with four seniors at 280 or heavier and a 350-pound freshman in Ellijah Farr in the rotation. Size and depth up front is the worst possible draw for a five-step passing game breaking in a new interior, and it is the reason I think this game gets ugly and low-scoring rather than turning into the shootout the number implies. If Hawaii comes out healthy, this line is a bit low for me. But with what we have seen this season to date, I'm willing to take a shot that they are not 100% healthy and the underdog has a live shot in this one. Bet: New Mexico State +7.5 (-112)
