Game Analysis
1-Star Best Bet – *WASHINGTON (+2.5) 29 Southern California 24
Both of these teams are better than their records, as Washington ranks 12th in the nation in compensated yards per play differential while USC ranks 24th in that metric. The Huskies have struggled on special teams, but they should be sitting at 6-2 right now instead of 4-4, as they dominated Washington State and Rutgers by a combined 989 yards to 683 yards in those losses. USC, meanwhile, just gives games away, as they have blown leads in all 4 of their losses, which are by a combined total of just 14 points.
USC’s offense has been 1.0 yards per play better than average this season, but Washington’s attack is nearly as good (+0.9 yppl) and I believe that their difficultly turning yards into points is just variance, as there is no reason that a team averaging 6.7 yards per play with just 0.9 turnovers per game should be averaging only 23.3 points. I expect the Huskies to start to average more than 4.0 points per redzone opportunity, which ranks near the bottom, as all indicators suggest that they should be a better than average redzone team given their good running attack (5.9 yard per rushing play) and accurate quarterback (72% completions).
While the offenses are about even from a compensated yards per play perspective, the Huskies have a much better defense. Washington has yielded just 17.7 points per game and just 4.5 yppl to teams that would combine to average 5.7 yppl against an average team (adjusted for facing Indiana’s backup QB last week). USC, meanwhile, has allowed 5.7 yppl to teams that would combine to average 6.2 yppl against an average team.
Washington is very likely to outplay USC from the line of scrimmage and the 3.9 points per game of negative special teams value is likely to regress. But I like Washington even if special teams continues to hurt them, as long as they’re close to as good as USC in the redzone. That should be the determining factor.
Washington is a 1-Star Best Bet at +1.5 or more and would be a Strong Opinion at +1.
- Team Stats
- Game Log
- USC
- Washington
Rush
- Run Plays 25.3 30.8
- Run Yards 151.9 144.9
- YPRP 6.0 4.7
Pass
- Pass Comp 26.4 22.3
- Pass Att 40.5 32.6
- Comp % 65.1% 68.2%
- Pass Yards 292.1 233.9
- Sacks 1.3 1.5
- Sack Yards 7.8 9.6
- Sack % 3.0% 4.4%
- Pass Plays 41.8 34.1
- Net Pass Yards 284.4 224.3
- YPPP 6.8 6.6
Total
- Total Plays 67.0 64.9
- Total Yards 436.3 369.1
- YPPL 6.5 5.7
TO
- Int 0.8 0.8
- Int % 1.9% 2.3%
- Fumbles 0.6 0.6
- Turnovers 1.4 1.4
- Points 31.8 21.8