Game Analysis

Bahamas Bowl

Friday, December 23 – 10 am Pacific

Old Dominion (-5 ½)  31   Eastern Michigan  30

Lean Eastern Michigan (+5 ½)

Both of these teams must be extremely excited to be playing in a bowl game in the Bahamas. Not just because this is the only bowl game played outside of the United States, but also because Eastern Michigan hasn’t been to a bowl game since 1987 and Old Dominion has never been to a bowl game. Old Dominion enters this game as the ‘hot’ team, as the Monarchs have won and covered in 5 consecutive games, but that is not usually a good thing in bowl season – as such teams are often overrated. In fact, teams that won and covered their previous 3 or more regular season games are just 36-53 ATS as favorites in bowl games. In this case, Old Dominion’s strong finish has the Monarchs a bit overrated.

Old Dominion’s offense was scoring a lot of points at the end of the regular season but the Monarchs also faced a collection of absolutely horrible defensive teams and their offense was just 0.1 yards per play better than average for the season (with QB David Washington in the game) when adjusting for the strength of defensive units faced. ODU averaged 6.5 yards per play with Washington in the game but their opponents would combine to allow 6.4 yppl to an average offensive team. Eastern Michigan is a below average defensive team (6.1 yppl allowed to teams that would average 5.6 yppl against an average defense) but the Eagles are actually better than the average rating of the defensive units that the Monarchs faced and my math projects 437 yards at 6.4 yppl for ODU in this game.

Eastern Michigan’s offense is led by senior quarterback Brogan Roback, who started the final 7 games of the regular season after missing the first three due to suspension and serving as a backup for two more games. Eastern Michigan averaged 6.0 yards per play in Roback’s 7 starts, against teams that would allow 6.2 yppl to an average team, which is slightly better than Old Dominion’s defensive rating of 0.3 yppl worse than average (5.7 yppl allowed to teams that would average 5.4 yppl against an average team). Eastern Michigan would be wise to throw the ball more than usual, as Roback (6.9 yards per pass play against teams that would allow 6.9 yppp) should have good success against an ODU defense that is 0.6 yppp worse than average defending the pass (6.2 yppp allowed to quarterbacks that would average just 5.6 yppp against an average defense). The math projects 418 yards at 5.9 yppl for Eastern Michigan.
Overall, the math projects Old Dominion with an edge of 19 total yards and an advantage of 0.4 in turnovers but the Monarchs have bad special teams units, which will help Eastern Michigan with field position. It all adds up to Old Dominion by 2 points and I’ll shave a point off of that for an 11-42 ATS bowl situation that applies to Old Dominion that is based on their 5 game win streak. I’ll lean with Eastern Michigan at +3 points or more and I also lean Under at 64 points or higher, as the math projects just 61 total points.