Game Analysis

Army (-17)  26   UTSA  13

The triple-option offense is designed to minimize the talent gap, which is why Army and other option teams tend to perform relatively better against better teams and relatively worse against less talented teams. Army has been good as an underdog in recent years and they’ve been able to use their option offense to control the clock and shorten the game against Oklahoma last year and Michigan last week, taking each of those elite teams to overtime. However, Army is just 9-30 ATS in their last 39 games when favored by 9 points or more (4-22 ATS against other FBS teams) and shortening the game by running the ball 90% of the time will make it harder to increase the margin.

Before last week’s impressive loss at Michigan the Black Knights managed to score just 14 points in their win over a Rice team with a bad defense and I don’t think they’ll be able to score enough points in this game justify the big spread. UTSA did allow 370 rushing yards at 9.7 yards per rushing play to Baylor last week but that could very well be an aberration given that the defensive line is traditionally the strength of the team. UTSA has had a better than average run defense every season aside from their first season as a program in 2011. Since then, the Roadrunners average run defense rating has been 0.3 yards per rushing play better than an average on a national scale. Last they were 0.1 yprp better than average (4.8 yprp allowed to teams that would average 4.9 yprp against an average FBS defense) and three of last season’s four starting defensive lineman return. I actually rate their run defense as 0.5 yprp worse than average this season due to 3 inexperienced linebackers but Army was 0.3 yprp worse than average on a per run basis last season and they’ve averaged only 4.2 yprp against Rice before averaging 3.6 yprp against Michigan last week. The worst facet of UTSA’s defense, by far, is the pass defense but that major weakness won’t be exploited by an Army team that has only averaged 6.5 pass plays per game. It’s similar to the Rice team that has one of the worst pass defenses in the nation every season but was able to limit Army to just 14 points in week 1. UTSA’s defense isn’t nearly as bad as normal when facing a team that won’t throw against them, so there is match-up value favoring the Roadrunners assuming that their run defense isn’t nearly as bad as it was last week (which is likely the case). Army and UTSA both run their offense at a slow pace so Army isn’t going to have many possession to get the 30 points or so that they’ll likely need to cover the spread in this game.

The question is if UTSA can score the 10 to 14 points it will probably take to stay within the number. The Roadrunners’ offense ranked dead last among FBS teams last season in compensated yards per play and while they should be better this season, they are still bad. Scoring 35 points in their opener against Incarnate Word was actually a bad effort given that their 6.0 yards per play is 1.5 yppl worse than the 7.5 yppl that I would project IW to allow on the road to an average FBS team, and the 3.6 yppl against Baylor’s starters last week was even worse (2.0 yppl worse than the 5.6 yppl that Baylor’s defense would allow at home against an average team). The market expects 13.5 points from UTSA in this game (based on the spread and total), which is what my ratings project (13.0 points) but I don’t think Army will score enough to cover the big number on the limited number of possessions expected in this game (only 116 total plays are projected) and my ratings like UTSA and the under but the value in both of those comes from my projection that Army will score far fewer than the 30.5 or 31 points projected by the market in their Team Total. If your book has 31 points for Army’s Team Total then playing that Under 31 is a Strong Opinion. The consensus line is 30.5 so this is not officially a Strong Opinion but some books do have 31.