Game Analysis

Tulane (-5)  24   ARMY  22

Tulane disappointed me by getting upset by Memphis last week, which led to a loss on my Memphis Team Total Under bet, and I think the line is too high in this game.

Tulane’s offense has been 0.7 yards per play better than average this season (6.5 yppl against FBS teams that would allow 5.8 yppl to an average team) but the Green Wave tend to throw more in competitive games, and they have a quarterback that’s averaged 8.3 yards per play this season and they’re a bit better offensively than their season rating.

The Army defense has allowed just 15.1 points per game but the Cadets have been just average on a yards per play basis (5.1 yppl allowed to teams that would combine to average 5.1 yppl against an average defense). Normally, I would adjust for the extreme outlier against Notre Dame, in which they gave up 10.1 yards per play, but Note Dame was also the best offensive team that they faced and I think that performance deserves a full weighting given that Tulane is about as good offensively as the Irish and 9 of the 11 teams that Army faced are worst than average offensively.

Tulane is projected to average 6.3 yards per play in this game, which is just 0.2 yppl below their season average. However, both teams run their offense at a very slow pace and Tulane is projected to run far fewer plays than normal and gain just 342 total yards, which is significantly lower than the 431 yards that they’ve averaged against FBS opponents. The Green Wave likely won’t come anywhere close to the 37.9 points that they’ve averaged.

Army’s offense has averaged 6.6 yards per play with quarterback Bryson Daily running the option (he missed the Air Force game) while facing teams that would allow 6.2 yppl to an average attack. Tulane has been 0.3 yppl better than average defensively, but the Green Wave are 0.3 yppl worse than average defending the run, which obviously matters more against a run-heavy option team. Tulane would be 0.1 yppl worse than average defensively against a team that runs the ball 85% of the time as Army does. Tulane did hold Navy to just 4.9 yppl in a shutout win a few weeks ago, but Navy’s quarterback was injured early in that game. Still, having faced the option earlier in the season is a benefit. Army is projected to gain 348 yards at 6.3 yppl.

These teams project evenly from the line of scrimmage given that favorable matchup of Army’s run-heavy offense against a Tulane defense that is much better defending the pass than defending the run. However, Tulane does have an edge in special teams and some other factors that lead to the model favoring the Green Wave by 1.6 points.