Game Analysis

Syracuse (-2)  34   West Virginia  32

Rotation #243 – Friday, 2:15 pm Pacific

My math model would have favored West Virginia by 7 points in this game if West Virginia’s star quarterback Will Grier and top receiver Gary Jennings Jr. were playing but instead we have Jack Allison at quarterback without the team’s most explosive weapon. To adjust for Allison, who’s thrown just 10 passes (7.5 yards per pass play), I decided to use the rating of a typical first year quarterback under coach Dana Holgorsen, which is still good but not nearly as good as Grier was this season. Adjusting for Jennings was a matter of substituting the yards per target of the other wide receivers (9.1 ypt) in place of Jennings’ 73 targets at 12.6 ypt, which worked out to 0.6 yards per pass play. I project Allison at 6.4 yards per pass play in this game against a Syracuse pass defense that’s 0.5 yppp better than average, and the Mountaineers’ good ground attack is projected to average 5.9 yards per rushing play against a soft Orange defensive front that is worse than average defending the run. Overall the math projects 453 yards at 6.2 yppl for West Virginia in this game but there is a lot of variance in that projection given that my adjustment for Grier being out was a guestimate – although I am in line with the market on the side and total.

The Syracuse offense is only 0.1 yards per play better than average with Eric Dungey at quarterback but the Orange tend to run a lot of plays, which makes their attack solidly better than average (they averaged 38.8 points per game). West Virginia’s defense is only 0.1 yppl better than average (5.9 yppl allowed to teams that would average 6.0 yppl against an average team) and the math projects 459 yards at 5.8 yppl for Syracuse in this game.

Overall, West Virginia still has a slight edge from the line of scrimmage but Syracuse has excellent punt and coverage teams units and an incredibly good kicker (+1.3 points per game over an average kicker) and the math favors the Cuse by 2.5 points with a total of 65.7 points. Those are pretty close to the line and I have no opinion on this game.