Game Analysis

Texas-San Antonio (-10)  35   COASTAL CAROLINA  23

This game is being played on Coastal Carolina’s home field and I’m giving the Chanticleers half of a home field advantage (about 1.2 points). The math would have favored UTSA by just 1 point prior to adjusting for all of Coastal Carolina’s transfers, which include both quarterbacks that played this season.

Most of Coastal Carolina’s transfers and injuries are on the defensive side of the ball, but the biggest impact is having to rely on a pair of true freshmen quarterbacks that have never taken a college snap, as both starter Vasko and backup Kim have left the team. TE Kendall Karr (10.2 yards per target on 23 targets) and WR Carmeron Wright (7.8 YPT but only 37.5% success rate) are also gone and I expect a huge drop in production in the pass game going from Vasko to a pair of inexperienced freshmen. RB Christian Washington (537 yards at 5.3 ypr) has transferred to San Diego State but that just means more carries for star Braydon Bennett, who missed some time but still ran for 727 yards at 6.5 ypr and has 1900 rush yards at 6.4 ypr over his career.

The UTSA defense is not good, but they’ll be relatively better in this game given that Coastal Carolina will likely run more given the inexperience at quarterback. The Roadrunners have allowed 6.0 yppl to a schedule of FBS opponents that would combine to average only 5.4 ypp but they’re very good defending the run (4.4 yprp and 0.6 yprp better than average) and terrible against the pass (7.4 yppp allowed to quarterbacks that would average 5.8 yppp against an average defense). The Roadrunners have a couple of injured defensive players that have either missed most of the season (DT Evans) or were not impactful to the success of the defense (S Robinson and CB Harris), but starting DE Ronald Triplette has decided to transfer and is not on the bowl depth chart. Triplette’s 4 sacks were second on the team, but he did little (only 23 tackles and 1 other tackle for loss) and I value him at 0.4 points.

The UTSA offense averaged 5.7 yards per play against teams that would allow 6.1 yppl and they’re not as good as the 31 points per game would suggest, as that is a function of playing a fast pace and having an extra possession per game. The offense is intact for this game and should produce against a depleted Coastal Carolina defense that was 0.4 yppl worse than average in the regular season and could be without as many as 5 starters for this game. Top tackler LB Lubin is transferring along with top CB McDoom (13 of the team’s 42 passes defended), who has already committed to play at Cincinnati. Three other starters may also be out due to injury as linebackers Bruce and Gedeon missed the previous two games and safety Wiliams missed the regular season finale. There’s been no update on any of those players and I’ll assume that they’re all 50% likely to play – although their combined impact works out to just 0.3 yppl if none of them played (about 2 points). Not having Lubin and especially McDoom is very significant, as those two and the other transfers that affect depth project to be worth 4.7 points.

I have algorithms that project value of players based on their stats but there is a lot of variance in those projections so my advice is to stay away from this game. After making all the adjustments for current personnel, I get UTSA by 12 points with a total of 58 points.