Game Analysis

Louisiana-Lafayette (-2)  31   Delaware  27

There appears to be no significant player defections in this game.

Louisiana-Lafayette was a disaster offensively to start the season, but Lunch Winfield took over at quarterback midway through the week 5 games against Marshall and led a 54-51 comeback win with 125 yards on 13 pass plays and 129 yards on 13 runs. Winfield’s season stats weren’t nearly as sensational, as he was 0.4 yards per pass play worse than average (6.3 yppp against teams that would allow 6.7 yppp to an average quarterback) and 5.8 yards per on 123 runs, but the offense went from being among the worst in the nation through 4 ½ games to being a respectable 0.6 yards per play worse than average in 7 ½ games with Winfield at quarterback.

Delaware’s defense rates at 1.0 yppl worse than average, although a run-heavy Louisiana attack helps a bit, as the Blue Hens are much worse defending the pass than they are defending the run. I project 400 yard at 6.3 yppl for the Ragin’ Cajuns in this game in what is expected to be slightly better than average scoring weather.

Delaware’s offense relies on the passing of Nick Minicucci, who completed 63% of his 482 passes with just 7 interceptions thrown. Minicucci was 0.8 yards per pass play worse than average after accounting for the defenses he faced and Delaware has a horrible rushing attack (1.1 yards per rushing play worse than average). The Hens will attack a Louisiana-Lafayette secondary that’s been 1.1 yppp worse than average this season (7.1 yppp allowed to teams FBS that would combine to average 6.0 yppp against an average defense) and I project 6.8 yppp for Minicucci in this game and 425 total yards at 5.9 yppl for the Blue Hens’ attack.

The Ragin’ Cajuns have a slight edge in projected turnovers and a 1-point edge in special teams but overall the math favors ULL by just 1.5 points with 59.3 total points. However, Delaware applies to an 8-46 ATS bowl situation based on their horrible defense and this game applies to a 40-13 Under situation based on the Ragin’ Cajuns going Over the total in each of their last 5 games.

I would Lean Under if the total gets up to 63 points or more.