I think we match up pretty well against OSU. They only struggled this year against 4 teams. Oregon, penn st, neb, and michigan. I chose those since I think we will put up a fight. I don’t see any way of this being a blow out game.
Utah defense is inbetween mich/penn and nebraska/oregon. On average those teams held OSU to 28.5 and went 2-2. Our pass def is on par with michigan yardage-wise. Shockingly in those games those defenses still gave up 397 yards to OSU through the air. We should be able to replicate similar results. Obviously, we haven’t played a team that is this effective in the air but these teams still held that prolific offense to avg 28.5 pts/game which is 16pt under their season avg. Which again I think we have the weapons to replicate that. We are also, statistically, the best pass rush team they will have faced. We are 11th in sacks and TFL nationally. So best guess for OSU score prediction would be 28 to 35 range.
The next question would obviously be how much can utah score on them. OSU gives up an avg of 20.5 pts/game but in the 4 competitive games they give up 29.5. In those 4 competitive games they allowed 178yds/game rushing and in the two losses they allowed 297 and 269 yds on the ground. This is huge for us. They are vulnerable to a solid ground game. Michigans attack is very similar to what we try to do with a lot of big sets and TE usage to create running lanes. There is a lot of film from that game that I’m sure ludwig is salivating about. The nice thing is that they also are vulnerable in the air and gave up 260yds/game in those 4 games that were close. Their defense gives up 9 extra points compared to normal in those close games. Their rush def gives up 120 yd/game, which is similar to oregon, asu and oreg st. All of which we ran well on. Even the loss to oreg st we had 188 on the ground. On paper we should be capable of running the ball well and if they choose to sell out on the run their def is still vulnerable in the air. I suspect we should be able to score 30+. Oregon did it on the ground and michigan did it on the ground and I think we have similar weapons to make the same thing happen. The games we stuggled in were almost always because of critical penalties and TOs which seems to be less of an issue in big games and when they are focused. So I think it will be a pretty close game and finish somethink like 35-31 for the utes.
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