Week 14 – Liberty at Sam Houston
posted November 28
The Game
Yes, guy.
This is an underrated <GOBBLE GOBBLE> Thanksgiving Friday affair as the Liberty Flames travel to Huntsville to take on the Sam Houston Bearkats. The Flames are 8-2 despite being thrown in the DUMPSTER by many fans and college football pundits and they’re playing their best football of the season. Sam Houston has been struggling recently but they boast an impressive record of 8-3 and have home field advantage for this yuuuge CUSA contest.
Let’s goooooooo!
The Details
Liberty -2 Sam Houston (47.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Liberty -3
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Liberty 24.75 Sam Houston 22.75
Liberty offense vs Sam Houston defense
The Flames have been moving like a TREMENDOUS MACHINE on the ground over the L4G and it’s reminded us of VINTAGE Liberty from 2023. The Flames rushed for 419 yards last week vs WKU (6.7 YPC), 309 vs UMass (6.4), 339 vs MTSU (6.4) and 273 vs Jacksonville St (4.9). Sam Houston has one of the best stop units in CUSA and they’ve been sound vs the run (#53 FBS) but Jacksonville St pounded them for 278 yards on the ground last week and Liberty has a much more effective THROW GAME than the Gamecocks which is nice to have in their back pocket. QB Kaidon Salter is the best QB in the conference and he’s starting to use his legs more as we approach press time. Liberty’s three-headed monster of Salter, star RB Quinton Cooley (1,164, 6.3, 13 TD), and Billy Lucas are in top form right now and have combined to rush for 363/300 yards over the L2G.
Sam Houston offense vs Liberty defense
Where has the offense gone, yo? QB Hunter Watson is back at the controls but the Bearkats still have no ability to utilize the THROW GAME (#124 FBS passing offense, #112 passing efficiency) and they’ve scored…….wait for it…..wait for it…..11/23/9/10/14 over the L5G. The Bearkats don’t have a single player with over 400 receiving yards on the season and the ground game has averaged 4.8/3.0/2.6/3.4/3.2 YPC over the L5G. Liberty is nothing special on defense (#69 run D, #59 pass efficiency D) so we anticipate that Sam Houston will have success moving the ball at times. Can they keep up with the Flames?
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
The Liberty Flames are the defending CUSA champs and their season appeared to go GLUG GLUG GLUG down the tubes after losing to Kennesaw St…..The important thing to remember about that defeat was that due to bye weeks and a canceled game, the Flames had only played ONE game from September 14th (!) until the October 23rd loss to the Owls…..After that hiatus they’ve been playing solid football and appear to be gelling at the right time……Liberty is #129 the FBS in penalty yards per game whilst Sam Houston is the much more disciplined team (#8)…..Liberty ranks #71 in the Phil Steele special teams rankings whilst Sam Houston (and their backup FG kicker) stroll in at #114.
Summary
We’ll roll with the more talented team playing their best football vs a team that appears to be fading. We’ve been waiting for the number to come down from -3 and the ML to drop from -140 and here we are.
Conclusion
Official play – Liberty ML -125
Sent 4:15pm Nov 28
-125 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.