Week 2 – Arkansas at Oklahoma St
posted Sept 5
LEAN ADDED Sept 6; See below
The Game
WOO PIG!
It’s time for Arkansas to hit the road and head down to Stillwater to face Oklahoma St for an underrated week two match-up. The Razorbacks curb stomped an overmatched Arkansas Pine-Pluff team last week (W 70-CACK) and whilst it’s hard to take much away from playing such a horrible opponent they certainly looked decent to say the least. Oklahoma St took down a solid FCS team in South Dakota St to start the campaign (W 44-20) and they look ready to battle the visitor from the SEC.
Let’s gooooooooooo!
The Details
Oklahoma St -7.5 Arkansas (62.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Oklahoma St -7
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Oklahoma St 35 Arkansas 27.5
Oklahoma St offense vs Arkansas defense
South Dakota St is a good football team but the Pokes failed to get to the 400Y mark on offense (394) and superstar RB Ollie Gordon was unable to do serious damage by his standards (28-126, 4.5, 2 TD). WOO PIG was decent vs the run LY considering their schedule (154 YPG, 4.2 YPC) and they could be even better in that regard in 2024. Gordon is close to a LOCK to exceed 100 yards on the ground but Arkansas will be able to keep him from going completely nuts and winning the game by himself. QB Alan Bowman looked good last week but recall he had a putrid 15-14 TD to INT mark LY. The match-up that could decide the game is the loaded Cowboys WR group vs an Arkansas secondary that has plenty of starting experience and some additional talent compared to the 2024 group. You aren’t gonna shut them down but WOO PIG appears capable of providing resistance and bagging an INT or two.
Arkansas offense vs Oklahoma St defense
Putting aside the fact that WOO PIG put up a SEVENTY-BURGER last week we expect better things overall from the offense in 2024 given the talent on hand and the fact that ace OC Bobby Petrino is fully in charge. QB Taylen Green is a legit dual-threat QB who was dominant at times with Boise St but the jury is still out on how he’ll do vs Power 4 competition. The good news is that he’s got a much improved WR/TE corps that’s very experienced and note that we expect to see #1 target WR Andrew Armstrong back for this game. Oklahoma St’s run D has been stinky the L2Y (167/178 YPG) and they’ll be in for a challenge on Saturday. Green can be a devastating runner and Arkansas has a legit #1 RB in Ja’Quinden Jackson. The Pokes also allowed 275 (!) YPG thru the air in 2023 and we don’t believe they’ve upgraded the talent in a significant manner. We expect the Razorbacks to move the ball consistently and they just need Green to avoid the heinous mistakes he made at times when playing for the Broncos.
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
Oklahoma St is 25-24-2 ATS L10Y as a home favorite (1-3 LY)……Arkansas HC Sam Pittman does his best work in the role of road underdog as he’s 9-3 ATS in that situation…..WOO PIG had a worse team on paper LY and they only lost to ROLL TIDE on the road by 3 and to Ole Miss by 7……Weather conditions should be ideal….Low 80s with light winds.
Summary
This teams look pretty close from a talent perspective but we prefer the team with the mobile QB, better defense, and a proven ability to perform well ON THE HIGHWAY.
Conclusion
We’ll have an Arkansas-related play some time soon. We’ll assess our options as we get closer to kickoff and go from there. Stay tuned!
UPDATE – Lean Arkansas +10
Posted 11:25am Sept 6
+10 is listed essentially everywhere
‘Official play’ means that this is one of our favorite plays of the week (perceived value, match-up, coaching, trends, etc.). We’re currently investing 25% more on these plays vs our ‘leans’. We’ll normally have two or three of these choices per week.
‘Lean’ means that we’re placing a standard size wager on the game. We’ll normally have about ten of these plays per week. Many members prefer to pick and choose amongst these games when finalizing their weekly investment cards so we’ll continue to refer to them as ‘leans’.
‘No leanage’ means that we won’t have any action on the game.
Team totals – We’ll list the implied number based on the point spread and total when our analysis is posted. If a team total ends up being an ‘official play’ we’ll post a widely available number at the time of pick release.