Game Analysis

1-Star Best Bet – *Indiana (-14)  35   PENN STATE  14

Penn State’s offense has mustered just 473 yards at 3.5 yards per play in two games since quarterback Drew Allar was lost to injury. I’ve been critical of Allar and the Penn State offense wasn’t particularly good with him, despite having two NFL caliber running backs, but Ethan Grunkemeyer has been worse (relative to the defenses he’s faced).

Grunkemeyer has had to face strong defensive teams in Iowa and Ohio State but the Lions have been 0.5 yppl worse than average in his two games after factoring in the quality of opposing defenses, which is worse than Penn State’s season rating of 0.0 (5.4 yppl against teams that would allow 5.4 yppl to an average team). Grunkmeyer is facing another elite very good defense today, as Indiana has allowed just 12.1 points per game with only Oregon topping 15 points (the Ducks elite offense has just 20 points). I do think the Penn State offense should be better than it’s been the last two games but I still project only 258 yards at 4.5 yppl for the Lions.

Penn State’s defense looked dominating early in the season against bad teams (Nevada, FIU and Villanova), but the Nittany Lions have allowed an average of 31.4 points and 6.1 yppl in 5 games against Big-10 teams that would combine to average 6.1 yppl against an average defense).  The slide has coincided with the injury to their best defensive player, LB Tony Rojas, who was leading the team in tackles for loss through the first 4 games before his injury.

I rate that unit at just 0.3 yppl better than average with Rojas still and – and after adjusting for last week’s outlier against Ohio State (9.1 yppl allowed) – but Indiana has one of the best offensive teams in the nation and the Hoosiers have averaged 43.1 points per game against teams that collectively rate the same defensively as Penn State’s defensive rating. The Hoosiers could be without leading receiver Elijah Sarratt, who has averaged 9.5 yards on the 64 passes targeted at him. The rest of the team (including the TEs and RBs) has averaged 9.9 yards per target so perhaps not having Sarratt wouldn’t have much of an impact. The math model projects 449 yards at 6.6 yppl for Indiana, which is below their 483 yard at 6.9 yppl season averages (excluding their game against an FCS team).

The math likes Indiana as a Best Bet at -14 or less and the Hoosiers also apply to a 97-41-3 ATS road favorite momentum situation.

Indiana is a 1-Star Best Bet at -14 -115 odds or better and a Strong Opinion to -15 points.