Week 15 – Big Ten Championship Game – Penn St vs Oregon
posted December 5
The Game
“There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”
<Billy the Kid> <Young Guns, 1988>
It seemed to be a virtual certainty that Ohio St would be facing off against Oregon in this game but the Buckeyes pulled a Miami Hurricanes-level CHOKE JOB and lost to Michigan as almost 3-TD favorites. Penn St is a worthy adversary for QUACK QUACK as they roll into Indianapolis with a mark of 11-1 with their only loss coming vs….wait for it….Ohio St. The Ducks (12-0) finished the regular season in style by pummeling Washington and it’ll be interesting to see if they can win the Big Ten Championship in their first season in the league.
Let’s gooooo!
The Details
Oregon -3.5 Penn St (49.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Oregon -5
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Oregon 26.5 Penn St 23.0
Oregon offense vs Penn St defense
The Ducks haven’t been blowing up the scoreboard like previous versions of Oregon football but they still boast one of the best QBs in college football in Dillon Gabriel (3,275, 24-6 TD to INT, 74%), a 1,000-yard RB in Jordan James, and a deep set of WR/TE weaponry including star WR Tez Johnson who came back from injury last week. Gabriel has only been sacked 12 times all season (five in L10G) and the Ducks are #7 in the nation on 3rd downs. Penn St is playing great defense once again this year (#4 total defense, #7 run D, #20 pass efficiency D) but they’ve faced a very weak collection of offenses. They did a decent job vs Ohio St but USC ripped them up for 409 yards and 30 points back in October. It’s not gonna be easy for Oregon to move the ball but they’ve got enough balance to give the Nittany Lions quite a bit of problems and a veteran QB who knows how to GIT R DONE.
Penn St offense vs Oregon defense
Penn St has done a fine job on offense over the course of the campaign (#19 total offense, #25 rush offense, #40 pass) but once again, we’re a little concerned about the competition they’ve faced. QB Drew Allar has put up some solid numbers (2,688, 18-5 TD to INT) but he struggled vs the three toughest defenses he faced in Ohio St/Illinois/Minnesota (48/69, 525 yards, 1-1 TD to INT in 3G). Oregon’s run defense has been very good but it hasn’t been a brick wall (112, #22 FBS) and that certainly gives Penn St some hope in this affair. The bad news for the Nittany Lions is that the Ducks have an elite secondary (#6 pass efficiency D; 9-10 TD to INT, 56%, 5.8 YPA) and an excellent pass rush (10 sacks last week vs Washington) that’s sure to give the Penn St OL some fits.
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
This is an interesting HC matchup in that James Franklin is seemingly 2-28 SU in “big games” ** whilst Dan Lanning has no problem treating “big games” like an experimental lab where “analytics” can make any ridiculous decision sound reasonable……Oregon outperformed Ohio St on a YPP basis (+0.76) whilst Penn St was outdone by Ohio St (-0.50) and USC (-0.86)….The Ducks have scored 30+ vs every FBS opponent and have allowed <300 yards in each of the L5G.
** Fact check: Close enough.
Summary
We prefer the Ducks in this matchup at the current market price and believe they’re the more talented team on both sides of the football.
Conclusion
NOTE: FUTURES CLUB members have a live TICKEE TICKEE on Oregon to win the Big Ten (+250) so we’ll be passing on the point spread in this game. Alerts for “hedging” activities will be posted on the QUICK TAKES page.
For those of you that don’t have an Oregon futures ticket, you’ve read what we think about the matchup and as always, just take that as an opinion to consider when making your own investment decisions.
If we have a play on the total or a team total it’ll come by 5pm on Friday. We’ll post an update here when we’ve made our final call.
UPDATE – NO LEANAGE
‘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.