Game Analysis

Texas State (-13.5)  40   North Texas  26

Texas State’s offense averaged 37.1 points and close to 500 yards per game at 6.6 yards per play (against teams that would allow 6.2 yppl to an average team) and they should feast on a bad North Texas defense as long as quarterback Jordan McCloud is in the game. There is speculation that McCloud won’t play the entire game in order to give freshman Brad Jackson some experience. The Bobcats will be without top RB Ismail Mahdi, but his 991 yards at 5.4 ypr should be replaced adequately by Pare, Burgess and Hankins, who combined for 1000 yards rushing at 5.5 ypr with Pare and Burgess (listed as co-starters) combining for 5.9 ypr. The remaining running backs also averaged a combined 10.7 yards on 19 targets while Mahdi averaged 7.5 YPT on 26 targets. I’m making no adjustment for Mahdi not playing although I’ll make an adjustment for the transfer of RT Alex Harkey.

The Mean Green are not so mean on defense, as that unit allowed 6.3 yppl despite facing teams that would combine to average just 5.3 yppl against an average defense. Opponents with better than average passing quarterbacks (South Alabama, Texas Tech, Tulane, and Houser of ECU) combined for 10.1 yards per pass play against the Eagles and McCloud should light that secondary up.

North Texas was good offensively with former TCU quarterback Chandler Morris leading the way. Morris averaged 7.0 yards per pass play against teams that would allow 7.1 yppp to an average FBS quarterback and the run game was good (5.7 yprp against teams that would allow 5.3 yprp to an average team). Morris has transferred along with top WR DT Sheffield and TE Oscar Hammond. Sheffield averaged 8.6 yards on his 96 targets, which wasn’t much better than the 8.2 yards per target that the next 6 wide receivers averaged, and Hammond averaged 9.2 yards on his 26 targets while the other tight ends combined for just 26 yards on 6 targets the entire season. Backup quarterback Drew Mestemaker threw just 5 passes and completed 4 of them for 69 yards in mop-up duty this season. I value the Mean Green offensive losses at 5.6 points but there’s a lot of variance in that projection given the lack of data on Mestemaker.

Texas State was good defensively for s Sun Belt team and 0.1 yppl better than average on a national scale, as the Bobcats yielded just 5.2 yppl to teams that would combine to average 5.3 yppl against an average defense. A few defenders are no longer with the team, most notably DE Parker, who missed the end of the season with injury, and CB Eaton, and the total value of the missing players is projected at 3.5 points.

The math favors Texas State by 14.6 points with 66.5 total points if Texas State McCloud plays the entire game, but that may not be the case. Without knowing how much McCloud will play I prefer to pass this game. There was heavy action on the under so maybe those rumors are true.