Week 12 – Tennessee at Georgia
posted November 14
The Game
Here we go!
The Georgia Bulldogs are in a must-win situation if they plan on making the CFP but the good news is that they get the Tennessee Volunteers at home this Saturday night. Georgia was good enough to beat Texas on the road earlier in the year but they’re definitely playing below expectations on both sides of the football. The Volunteers are still in the hunt to make both the SEC title game and the CFP and they’ve only lost one game all season (WOO PIG, L 19-14).
The Details
Georgia 9.5 Tennessee (47.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Georgia -8
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Georgia 28.5 Tennessee 19
Georgia offense vs Tennessee defense
The Bulldogs have been struggling with the rushing attack (124 YPG, #104 FBS; 191 YPG, #21 LY) and QB Carson Beck has been wildly inconsistent compared to LY (2-7 TD to INT L3G). The RB/TE/WR weaponry is “average” from an SEC-quality standpoint so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare vs a solid Tennessee stop unit (#5 total defense, #9 run D, #12 pass efficiency D). The Volunteers haven’t faced many good offenses this season but they did hold WOO PIG to 19 points and ROLL TIDE to just 17 points in their yuuuge win back in October. We expect Georgia to be able to move the football at times but we’d be surprised if they had a ton of success in this game.
Tennessee offense vs Georgia defense
The main topic of interest this week has been the injury status of Tennessee’s starting QB Nico Iamaleava who’s in concussion protocol. He’s been practicing and the recent line move back into the single digits tells us that he should play on Saturday. However, even when he was healthy the Volunteers were struggling to SCORE the FOOTBALL in SEC play and if Georgia can shut down star RB Dylan Sampson (1,131, 20 TD)(!) it’s gonna be tough sledding for Tennessee on offense. Georgia has been solid vs the run and have only allowed 7 rushing TDs all year. Also recall that they held mighty Texas to just 259 yards of total offense (29 net rushing yards; sack yardage included) and they’ve only allowed five plays of 40+ yards in 9 games. Tennessee needs to hit explosive plays in order for the offense to work so they may have trouble in this tilt.
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
The intrepid Phil Steele reminds us that Georgia has covered the L5 meetings vs Tennessee and they’ve won the L7 SU…..The weather forecast looks ideal for mid-November night football.
Summary
It seems to us that at least one of the two defenses will rise up and give the opposing offense a lot of trouble. We expect conservative game plans to start the game so it’s likely we’ll see a relatively low scoring first half.
Conclusion
Lean – First half under 24 -115
Posted 4:25pm Nov 14
24 -115 is consensus.
‘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.