Model-driven college football coverage from the Gridpex desks.
UCLA is favored by under two points, and both offenses are missing the piece the other side is least equipped to defend. California's #121 run defense draws UC…
Both teams went 4-8 last season and one of them is laying 26.5 points. The gap is real but not that wide: Florida projects to win 31-18, thirteen points. The l…
Mississippi State averaged 30.4 points a game last season and still finished 5-8, which tells you the offense was the functional half of that team. Its rushing…
The last time these programs met, in 2021, Michigan won by 33, and the gap underneath that scoreline has not closed: Michigan's incoming class carries 12 blue-…
Arkansas State lost 37 players to the portal and brought back 25, a net bleed of 35 recruiting stars that landed hardest at receiver and on the defensive line.…
Texas A&M scored 33.8 a game and allowed 21.0 on the way to 11-2, and the roster that produced it is still largely in place: 79% of last season's passing produ…
Penn State is favored by more than three touchdowns while replacing nearly everything that produced for it: 48 players out, 38 in, a net loss of 33 recruiting…
The 114th Border War arrives with the series at 57-52-5 for Colorado State and Wyoming's 28-point win in the last meeting still hanging over it. Colorado State…
Iowa is favored by more than four touchdowns, and the reason is mostly what Northern Illinois lost. Twenty-two players left DeKalb and seven arrived, a positio…
Auburn is favored less for what it added than for what it already proved: 20.7 points allowed last season behind the nation's second-ranked run defense. That f…
South Carolina went 4-8 last season and allowed 22.1 points a game — a losing record attached to a defense that finished sixth nationally against the run. Kent…
A 4-8 team that scored 21.8 points a game is laying three touchdowns at home. That says more about what Coastal Carolina lost than about anything West Virginia…
South Florida is favored by 13.2 on the strength of a season neither team is fielding intact. Last year's body of work is worth 11.7 of the 18.1 points that se…
Oregon -24.5 is a large number for a game in which the quarterback column is a wash. Nearly 13 of the 22 points separating these teams comes from last season's…
Duke grades 7.6 points better than an 11-3 Tulane team, and 4.5 of that is the game being in Durham. The next-largest piece is the portal, worth about two poin…
Nebraska is favored by 23.8 mostly on paperwork. The largest slice of the 15.5-point rating gap is last season's body of work, worth 4.9 points, with home fiel…
Ole Miss grades 17.6 points better than Louisville. The largest single piece of that, 7.6 points, is what the two teams did last fall: 13-2 against 9-4. The qu…
Wisconsin arrives with the settled quarterback and still gets 20.5 points. Colton Joseph has two FBS seasons and +0.282 EPA per play of record; CJ Carr, Notre…
SMU has not taken a snap this season and is still favored on the road. The 7.7-point gap between these teams is largely a roster accounting problem: transfer t…
UNLV beat Hawai'i by 28 the last time these teams met, and almost none of the passing production that did it is still in Las Vegas. Hawai'i grades 9.4 points t…
Miami grades 26.5 points better than Stanford, and 19.8 of that comes from last season's body of work, against 2.5 for the quarterback gap. Stanford has alread…
USC is favored by three touchdowns less for anything it did last Saturday than for the 17.9 points of separation built across a full season. Of that gap, 7.4 t…
Eastern Michigan sent 26 players into the portal and brought back 12, a net loss of 30 stars' worth of talent — the kind of teardown that widens every error ba…
Opening weekend has been a good place to lay two touchdowns. Among 120 FBS home favorites of 13 to 20 points in the season's first week, 2013 through 2023, the…
