Oklahoma at Ohio St – College Football Predictions
The Game
WHOA NELLIE ! The hits just keep on coming.
This week we get treated to a rematch between THE Ohio St Buckeyes and the Oklahoma Sooners. Last season the Buckeyes came away with a 21-point victory on the road but we expect a much closer game this time around. Do the Sooners have the MINERALS to pull off a big upset and really kickstart their season ? Let’s dig in.
The Details
OHIO ST 7.5 OKLAHOMA (64.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Ohio St -8
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Ohio St 36 Oklahoma 28.5
Massey Ratings Projected Score: Ohio St 31 Oklahoma 28
The Match-Up
Ohio St offense vs Oklahoma defense
Buckle up. It’s JT Barrett and the devastating Ohio St running game vs a Sooners’ defense that we just do not know a lot about yet. We find the criticism of Barrett pretty amusing. He is a great leader in our opinion with the mobility to give defense fits. The “he is a horrible passer” narrative starts to get a bit old. Of course he has some bad games but he started off well last week with a 300 yard performance vs Indiana (3 TD 0 INT). The offense introduced the world to freshman sensation JK Dobbins last week and they get 1,000 yard rusher Mike Weber back for this contest. The most difficult thing for us while capping this game was getting a handle on how good the Sooners’ defense will perform. They allowed 29 points per game last season and only bagged 25 sacks which was very non-Oklahoma like. Like. We find it hard to imagine Ohio St not getting into the 30s in this one.
Oklahoma offense vs Ohio St defense
We are in for a treat, yo.
QB Baker Mayfield was #2 on the only 2016 Heisman ballot that mattered – OURS (D Watson #1) – but he is in for a big challenge this week against a nasty Ohio St DL. Of course Indiana had quite a bit of success MATRICULATING in the passing game last week, and whether or not you call it “luck” or “jump balls”, we just take the 420 passing yards allowed as a fact. And then we wonder if Baker Mayfield can slice them to bits given how great the passing attack looked last week. Yes, it was vs UTEP, but they used 3 QBs are looked pretty devastating. We expect excellent TE Mark Andrews to drive the Bucks crazy. And how can we forget this MONUMENTAL match-up ? One of (THE ?) best DL going up against one of the best OL in college football. We always look at the DL first and go from there. Our gut feel is that the Sooners’ OL will be able to hold their own for stretches of this game. They just need to take advantage. We can see Oklahoma getting into the high 20s and maybe the 30s.
MEGA SIZZLERS
New Sooners HC Lincoln Riley is in a YUUUUUGE game early on in his HC career and he takes on one of the best of all-time…..get cho POPCONE……Ohio St is 3-7 ATS L10 games…..Oklahoma is 14-6-1 to the over in their last 21 road contests.
Summary
We keep flipping on this one. We are super pumped to watch it just not sure about how to bet the game if at all. We lean to the Buckeyes due to our belief in their running attack and the great Urban Meyer. The issue we have is not knowing how good this Oklahoma team is right now. We are not confident in our assessment enough to ask Ohio St to win by (essentially) double digits.
Conclusion
No official play for now. Will wait and see if this bad boy moves down to 7. Otherwise it may be a sit and enjoy game for us which is more than fine. No opinion on the total it looks like a perfect number.