Game Analysis

1-Star Best Bet – *MICHIGAN STATE (+7.5 -115)  23   Penn State  23

Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith struggled in his first season at Oregon State in 2018 (2-10 straight up and 4-7-1 ATS) before improving the Beavers into a top-25 team by 2022 (#11 final ranking). His Oregon State team started their improvement in his second season and went 36-21-1 ATS the rest of his seasons with the Beavers. Last season was Smith’s first at Michigan State and the Spartans went just 5-7 and 4-8 ATS. MSU is also showing signs of improvement in Smith’s second season, as they’ve covered the spread in 5 of their last 6 games and are 5-0 ATS as an underdog this season.

I won a 2-Star Best Bet on Michigan State as a 4.5-point underdog at Minnesota prior to their bye week and the Spartans were unlucky to lose by 3 in overtime given that they outplayed the Gophers by 17 points from the line of scrimmage in that game (467 yards at 6.8 yards per play to 301 yards at 4.9 yppl). The fact that they lost to fall to 0-6 in the conference has helped maintain the line value in favor of Michigan State.

The Nittany Lions are tied with MSU in the conference standings at 0-6 and Penn State hasn’t won and covered the spread in any game all season. The Lions’ 3 victories this season were all as a favorite of 42 points or more and they lost to the spread in all 3 of those games while also losing straight up as a favorite 3 times, including laying 24.5 points at UCLA and laying 21.5 points at home to Northwestern.

Michigan State is a decent team, rating at 0.1 yards per play worse than average on offense and average on defense after compensating for the opponents that they’ve faced and Penn State isn’t that much better to be favored by a touchdown or more in this game. The Nittany Lions also rate at 0.1 yppl worse than average on offense this season (5.1 yppl against FBS opponents that would allow 5.2 yppl to an average team) while the defense rates at 0.6 yppl better than average.

Penn State is worse now than their modest season ratings, as the offense has been 0.4 yppl worse than average since the injury to starting quarterback Drew Allar (3.9 yppl against teams that would allow 4.3 yppl to an average team) and the defense has been average in 5 games without their top linebacker Tony Rojas. Rojas only played in 4 games and he still ranks 3rd on the team in both sacks and total tackles for loss while his 6.3 tackles per game ranks 3rd on the team.

In those 5 games without Rojas, Penn State has allowed 6.1 yppl to opposing offenses that would combine to average 6.1 yppl against an average defensive team and they’ve gone from being great defending the run to being slightly below average stopping the run (5.6 yards per rushing play allowed to teams that would combine to average 5.5 yprp). The Lions’ defense played great last week against Indiana but the week before that they allowed 9.1 yppl to Ohio State.

The games to look at are the games without Rojas against mediocre to bad offensive teams UCLA, Northwestern, and Iowa. In those games the Penn State defense gave up 5.6 yppl, which is 0.1 yppl worse than what those teams would average against an average FBS defense. I couldn’t justify making Penn State’s defense that much worse without Rojas (although they may be) and I settled on a small 0.1 yppl adjustment from 0.6 yppl better than average for the season to 0.5 yppl better than average for this game, which is about 0.5 points.

I feel like this is a very conservative adjustment and I decided not to adjust the Penn State offense downward based on just 3 games with Grunkemeyer at quarterback against 3 elite defensive teams because Allar also was relatively worse against good defenses. However, despite only making a 0.5 points adjustment from Penn State’s season rating the math still favors Michigan State as the right side in this game and the Spartans are in a good spot having come off a bye week while Penn State likely spent a lot of their week thinking about what could have been against Indiana after losing on the final drive of the game.

The Lions gave their best effort last week at home against the #2 team in the nation and I’m not sure they have much left in their emotional tank for a 3-6 Michigan State team on the road. Teams that lost by 7 points or fewer as an underdog of 7 points or more the previous week tend to suffer a bit of a letdown, as such teams are just 685-885-24 ATS in conference games, including just 125-192-3 ATS favored from 3.5 to 13.5 points (i.e. against a lesser but still competitive opponent).

My math model only favors Penn State by 1.7 points based on this season’s metrics only and the situation favors the Spartans a bit. Obviously, I’d favor the Lions by more if my preseason ratings were blended in but I don’t feel like Penn State’s preseason ratings should carry much weight given their 6-game losing streak.

Michigan State is a 1-Star Best Bet at +7 points or more (-115 odds or better).