Missouri vs

Army

at Fort Worth
Wed, Dec 22
ESPN
5:00 PM Pacific
Rotation: 225
Odds: Army -6.5, Total: 54.5

Game Analysis

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Army (-6.5)  31   Missouri  24

This wasn’t a good matchup for Missouri to begin with, given that their defense has struggled defending the run this season (6.0 yards per rushing play allowed), and now the Tigers will be without starting DT Akial Byers and leading tackler S Martez Manuel. The Tigers will also be without star RB Tyler Badie (1604 yards at 6.0 ypr), who left the team to prepare for the NFL combine.

Badie’s absence should have an impact, but his backups weren’t bad, as the rest of the running backs combined for 5.4 ypr on 73 runs this season. However, Army defends the run well, which will put more pressure on new starting quarterback Brady Cook, who beat out two-year starter Connor Bazelak in an open competition among the top 3 quarterbacks during bowl practices. Hard to say how good Cook will be, as his only real work this season was against the best defense in the nation (Georgia), when he totaled just 42 yards 15 pass plays before the Bulldogs’ backups entered the game (25 yards on 6 pass plays in garbage time).

I’ll assume that Cook is not a downgrade given that he beat out Bazelak and not having Badie to dump the ball off too might help the Tigers’ aerial attack. While Badie was great in the run game, he was terrible catching the ball out of the backfield, averaging a pathetic 4.4 yards on 75 targets with just a 32% success rate in the pass game. Why would you target a running back 75 times when he’s only averaging 4.4 yards per target? Perhaps the offensive coordinator won’t be so stupid without Badie as an option and throwing the ball downfield more could produce better results in the pass game – especially against an Army defense that’s allow 7.4 yards per pass play to quarterbacks that would combine to average 6.2 yppp against an average defense. I didn’t adjust the Missouri pass offense up because Badie is out, but there is certainly a reasonable chance that it could be better. I project 328 yards at 5.7 yards per play for the Tigers in this game.

Army’s option rushing attack should work well against Missouri’s bad run defense and I project 341 rushing yards at 6.0 yprp and 418 total yards at 6.5 yppl for the Black Knights in this game.

Overall, the math only favors Army by 4.8 points, with a total of 53.0 points, but the Cadets tend to score a couple of points more than projections because of their analytically correct 4th down decisions (they went for it on 4th down 36 times and converted on 25 of them). So, I’ll call for Army by 7 with a total of 55 points and I have no interest in betting this game.

  • Team Stats
  • Game Log
  • Missouri
  • Army
MOU
Offense
Defense

Rush

  • Run Plays 33.8 38.7
  • Run Yards 187.2 234.0
  • YPRP 5.5 6.1




Pass





  • Pass Comp 22.7 15.7
  • Pass Att 34.7 26.7
  • Comp % 65.4% 58.8%
  • Pass Yards 226.6 210.9
  • Sacks 1.6 2.4
  • Sack Yards 10.0 16.4
  • Sack % 4.4% 8.3%
  • Pass Plays 36.3 29.1
  • Net Pass Yards 216.6 194.5
  • YPPP 6.0 6.7

Total

  • Total Plays 70.0 67.8
  • Total Yards 403.8 428.5
  • YPPL 5.8 6.3

TO


  • Int 0.9 0.9
  • Int % 2.7% 3.4%
  • Fumbles 0.1 0.4
  • Turnovers 1.0 1.3
 
  • Points 29.7 34.7
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