Game Analysis

New Mexico Bowl

Saturday, December 17 – 11 am Pacific

NEW MEXICO (-7 ½)  33   Texas-San Antonio  20

Strong Opinion New Mexico (1-Star Best Bet at -7 at -115 odds or better)

Lean Under (58 ½)

New Mexico continues to rise under coach Bob Davies and the Lobos upped their record to 8-4 this season to earn another chance to win a bowl game on their home turf. New Mexico lost in this bowl game last season 37-45 to Arizona but the Lobos did cover the spread and should do so again this year with a comfortable victory a bad UTSA team whose most impressive win was against a Middle Tennessee State team that is about 8 points worse than an average FBS team. The five FBS teams that the Roadrunners were able to beat have an average rating of 14.5 points worse than average, which is a prime example of how diluted the bowl games are nowadays.

UTSA averaged 30 points per game, but that average is very misleading given the 365 total yards per game (in regulation) and 5.3 yards per play that the Roadrunners average. Those raw numbers aren’t horrible but they are when you consider that UTSA faced a schedule of teams that would combine to allow an average of 445 yards per game and would give up 6.4 yards per play to an average attack. My offensive rating for the Roadrunners is even worse because I dampen the affect of outliers, and in this case, UTSA’s yards per play average was skewed by the 11.3 yppl they averaged against Southern Miss. UTSA averaged 5.0 yppl or less in 6 of their 11 games against FBS teams.

New Mexico is a bad defensive team that has allowed 6.5 yppl and rates at 1.0 yppl worse than average after adjusting for schedule strength. The Lobos don’t give up as many points (32.4 per game) as would be expected from that defensive yppl rating because their opponents averaged 8 fewer plays than average. San Antonio quarterbacks Dalton Sturm and Jared Johnson, who has been getting snaps lately, should decent success through the air in this game as their pass rating (1.9 yards per pass play worse than average) is only a bit worse than New Mexico’s pass defense (1.5 yppp worse than average), but the Roadrunners’ ground attack is projected to average only 4.6 yards per rushing play. Overall, my model projects just 295 total yards at 5.2 yards per play for the Roadrunners in this game, which should net them around 20 points.

New Mexico’s Pistol offense led the nation in rushing this season and the Lobos averaged 7.0 yards per rushing play while averaging a decent 6.8 yards per pass play. Overall, New Mexico averaged 466 yards at 7.0 yards per play but they did so against teams that would allow 6.4 yppl and their 37.8 points per game was against a schedule that would allow 35.0 points to an average team. In basic terms, New Mexico’s offense isn’t nearly as good as they look on the stats sheet.

The Lobos are still good enough to score a good number of points in this game, although I do expect them to fall short of their season average for yards and yards per play against a pretty decent UTSA stop unit. The Roadrunners are actually average in run defense and their sub-par pass defense (6.4 yards per pass play allowed to quarterbacks that would average 5.5 yppp against an average defense) won’t be fully exploited by a Lobos’ attack that runs the ball 77% of the time. New Mexico is projected at 6.3 yards per rushing play, well below their season average of 7.0 yprp, and 428 yards at 6.5 yards per play.

Overall, the math favors New Mexico by 12 points in this game and I’ve added a couple of points to a 46-7-1 ATS bowl angle that applies to the Lobos. I’ll consider New Mexico a Strong Opinion at -9 ½ or less and I’d play the Lobos in a 1-Star Best Bet at -7 at -115 odds or better.

I also favor this game to go Under the total, as both teams run their offense at a slow pace and both teams played higher scoring games than their stats would project, which has led to a higher over/under number. The total was set too high because New Mexico’s games have averaged 70 total points. However, New Mexico has faced a schedule of teams that combine to average 60 total points and UTSA is actually a lower than average total scoring team, as their 58 total points per game is actually only 54.5 total points per game in regulation (45 points were scored in 5 OT loss to UTEP) and their opponents combine to average 63.6 total points per game in regulation – so the Roadrunners are actually 9.1 points per game lower scoring than average. The compensated points model projects 58.3 total points but my model projects even less than that, as UTSA is not expected to average the 5.4 points per red zone opportunity that they’ve averaged. An average offensive team averages 4.9 points per RZ and UTSA’s offensive numbers would projects only 4.7 points per RZ, which is a difference of 2.6 points per game from the randomly high 5.4 points per RZ they averaged this season. New Mexico averaged 5.6 points per RZ on offense and on defense and those numbers should regress towards the mean as well – although not as much, as option teams tend to be more efficient in general and New Mexico’s defense traditionally has a higher than average points per RZ. Overall, the higher than projected points per red zone of these two teams in the regular season made them both higher scoring than they should have been and my model adjusts for that variance and projects only 52 ½ total points. I’ll lean Under the total and would consider the Under is a Strong Opinion at 59 points or higher.