Game Analysis

TROY (-7) vs Coastal Carolina

This one depends on the status of Coastal Carolina’s All-American quarterback Grayson McCall, who has missed the last two games but is now considered a game time decision to play today. McCall is certainly not 100% and at the beginning of the week I thought he’d be out again and released Troy as a 1-Star Best Bet at -10.

With McCall at 100%, which he likely won’t be, I’d favor Troy by 8.8 points and I get the Trojans by 18.3 points if he’s out.

With McCall for Coastal Carolina

TROY (-6.5)  31   Coastal Carolina  22

Without McCall for Coastal Carolina

1-Star Best Bet – *TROY  31   Coastal Carolina  13

My math model would have favored Troy by 9.3 points in this game with Coastal Carolina’s All-American quarterback Grayson McCall playing. McCall is one of the most valuable players in the nation, as the level of quarterback play before he arrived at Coastal and the level his backups have played during his tenure, is a drastic decline from his level of play.

In 2019, Coastal Carolina’s offense was 0.8 yards per play better than an average FBS attack in the games that McCall played and they were 0.3 yppl worse than average in the game he missed. Last season the Chanticleers were 0.9 yppl better than average with McCall at quarterback and 0.7 yppl worse than average in the two games he misses. One of those games was played in really bad weather, but they were just average in the other game. This season’s offense hasn’t been as good because the rushing attack has struggled, but Coastal was still 0.4 yppl better than average in McCall’s 9 games at quarterback and they’ve been 0.9 yppl worse than average in two games since his season-ending injury. Overall, the team has been an average of 7.3 points per game worse from the line of scrimmage in the 5 games McCall has missed (adjusted for opponent and site of game) and the difference in expected turnovers between McCall (1 interception in 9 games this season and just 7 in 3 seasons) and his backups is worth an additional 2.5 points per games even with the model projecting only 0.85 interceptions despite Guest having thrown 4 picks on 43 pass attempts this season. That’s a difference of 9.8 points per game between McCall and his backups over the last 3 years and my math model projects a difference of 9.7 points between the prediction with McCall and the prediction on this game without him.

In the 5 games with McCall, the Chanticleers’ backup has faced just one good defense, which was last week’s 7-47 loss at James Madison in which the offense averaged just 2.8 yards per play. They face another tough defense this week, as Troy has yielded just 16.8 points per game and 4.6 yppl this season to teams that would combine to average 5.4 yppl against an average defensive team.

Troy’s offense is 0.1 yppl worse than average, but that’s more than good enough to win this game by double-digits against a horrible Coastal defense that’s surrendered 6.4 yppl to teams that would combine to average only 5.3 yppl against an average team.