Week 5 – Buffalo at Connecticut
posted September 27
The Game
Yes, guy.
OUR Connecticut Huskies are off to a 2-2 start much to the thrill of SEASON WIN TOTAL CLUB but there’s still a lot of football left to be played. The real good news is that they’re getting better every week and they just smoked FAU 48-10 after losing by one score on the road vs Duke (!). And how about those Buffalo Bulls? They SHOCKED the WORLD last week taking down mighty Northern Illinois who had previously beaten Notre Dame. The Bulls couldn’t even muster 200Y of offense in that affair but when you’re a scrappy and well-coached team, sometimes stats just don’t matter.
This is a very underrated game and one of our favorite Group of Five games of the season to date.
Let’s gooooooo!
The Details
Connecticut -5.5 Buffalo (44.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Connecticut -7
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Connecticut 25 Buffalo 19.5
Connecticut offense vs Buffalo defense
Buffalo better strap in and get ready to tackle because the Huskies have the rushing attack in high gear. They’ve got a deep stable of RBs led by Durrell Robinson (296, 8.5 YPC!) and since they committed to Nick Evers at QB they’ve also had the threat of the QB run (Evers 78 yards, 2 TD last week). QB Joe Fagnano is a capable passer should they need him in a pinch (7-1 TD to INT) and the Huskies have a legit duo at WR in TJ Sheffield and the devastating Skyler Bell (347, 23.1, TD). The offensive line has been excellent in run blocking (421 rush yards last week!) and they’ve only allowed one sack all year. Buffalo has one of the better defenses in the MAC led by all-Universe LB Shaun Dolac but Missouri and Northern Illinois managed to have some success on the ground and the Bulls are also gonna have to worry about the Huskies’ crafty WR tandem.
Buffalo defense vs Connecticut defense
The Bulls are #98 in the country in rushing offense (132 YPG) and #126 in passing offense (136 YPG) and they were held to well under 200Y (!) of total offense in both of their road games this season. QB CJ CJ Ogbonna is very limited as a passer and this looks strangely like the very same offense that Connecticut completely shut down last week (FAU, 250Y). Connecticut has been pretty stingy since the opening week blowout loss to Maryland and Buffalo lacks playmakers at RB (3.5 team YPC) and at WR (one player with more than 76Y in 4G).
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
Buffalo is playing in back-to-back road games and now have to make the annoying trip to the communist stronghold of Storrs, Connecticut where HC Jim Mora is 10-4 ATS………Also note that the Bulls are coming off the yuuuge win over Northern Illinois which makes it a theoretical letdown spot…..UConn’s only goal this season is to make a bowl game and it’s a big deal for them….They can’t afford to drop this game, so if they don’t perform well, it won’t be because of a lack of motivation…..Weather conditions should be perfect on Saturday…..Fun and useless factoid – this is Buffalo’s first game on natural grass since the 2019 Bahamas Bowl.
Summary
We’ll roll with the better team in a nice situational spot. We expect them to win the stats fairly convincingly and they just need to avoid the dreaded turnover bug.
Conclusion
Official play – Connecticut -5.5 -110
Sent 12:35pm Sept 27
-5.5 is the market consensus but there are almost as many -6s as there are -5.5s so shop around.
‘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.