Game Analysis

Syracuse (-17)  40   Washington State  23

Washington State some key players to the portal and they’ll be without their head coach and both coordinators.

The biggest loss on the Washington State offense is obviously QB John Mateer, who was 0.5 yards per pass play better than average throwing the ball but was even more valuable as a runner with 978 yards on 145 runs (6.7 yprp) in 11 games against FBS teams. Not having WR Kris Hudson is not a negative given that Hudson averaged just 6.6 yards on his 88 targets against FBS teams while the 4 wide receivers listed as starters on the depth chart for this game combined for 10.2  YPT on 171 targets. Not forcing the ball to Hudson could actually be a positive, but I’ve settled on no adjustment for the receiving group. The absence of top RB Parker is detrimental given his 5.0 ypr against FBS teams is being replaced by two running backs that combined for just 3.9 ypr this season.

Zevi Eckhaus is slated to start at quarterback in place of Mateer and he has 3 years of starting experience at the FCS level at Bryant, where he averaged 7.0 yards per pass play in his final two seasons there while adding 744 yards on 109 runs (6.8 yprp). Eckhaus obviously faced less talented defenses and my adjustment for schedule strength (and better talent to work with at WSU) equates to 6.3 yppp had he faced Washington State’s schedule of defenses this season, which is 0.8 yppp worse than Mateer. However, Eckhaus has proven that he can run at about the same level as Mateer. The question is if he’ll run as often as Mateer ran this season (13.2 run per game against FBS team), as Eckhaus only ran it about 5 times per game at Bryant.

Syracuse was horrible defending the run this season (6.1 yprp allowed to teams that would average 5.3 yprp against an average defense) and they were just 0.2 yppp better than average defending the pass (average without CB Bellamy, who was #2 on the team in passes defended and won’t play after transferring). The Washington State running backs only project to run for 4.6 yards per run but Eckhaus should average around 7 yards per run when he takes off. I’ll assume he runs less than Mateer ran but more than he ran it at Bryant. The WSU offense projects to be about 6 points worse than if everyone were playing but they still should move the ball at a decent rate, as Eckhaus is a decent passer and a good runner, and the Syracuse defense is worse than average.

The Syracuse offense was 0.3 yppl better than average this season (6.0 yppl against teams that would allow 5.7 yppl to an average team) but they’re better than that metric because they average a lot of plays per drive and averaged 17.6 more plays per game than their opponents this season. The Washington State defense was 0.4 yppl worse than average this season, although a pass-heavy Syracuse offense isn’t as likely to take advantage of the Cougars’ defensive weakness, which is stopping the run. WSU has some starters that have transferred and won’t play, and I project the Cougars’ defense to be 0.7 yppl worse without the departed players, which equates to 5.4 points given the number of plays that Syracuse is likely to run in this game.

After all the number crunching to account for Washington State’s attrition, the math comes out to Syracuse by 17.0 points with a total of 62.9 points.