Penn State Has No Shot At Winning Nine Games This Season
Brandon Walker: Penn State Under 9 wins Auburn under 7 wins
Penn State has a really tough schedule that includes road games at Wisconsin, Ohio State and Iowa. I’d be shocked if they were favored in any of those games and wouldn’t be shocked to see them lose all three. They also have to play Indiana, Auburn, Michigan, Rutgers who’s not a gimme anymore and Michigan State. It’s almost hard to see how they can possibly win 9 games on this schedule. They lost a lot of talent that already wasn’t a great team to begin with. They may have ended the year strong but I’m not someone who’s a big believer in momentum carrying over from one season to the next to begin with. Under it is.
This may seem like a low win total for Auburn but there’s good reason for it, Auburn just isn’t a good football team. Bo Nix is absolutely not the player that Auburn fans hoped he would be two years ago when he threw that game winning TD pass against Oregon in Week 1. Not to mention they have an absolute gauntlet of a schedule. They play Alabama, Georgia, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, LSU, Arkansas, Mississippi State, South Carolina and at Penn State. To go over 7 wins they’d have to win 5 of these games and with Alabama and Georgia as almost guaranteed losses I just don’t see how they do it. Growing pains with a new coach mixed with a lack of talent that got their doors blown off by Northwestern in their bowl game last season should lead to a really tough season for the Tigers.
Mintzy: Alabama under 11.5 wins
I talked about it last week when Brandon made this pick but I will reiterate, in Alabama‘s six national championships under Nick Saban he has lost a regular season game in four of them. Alabama may reload like no one else in college football but they still are losing a shit ton of talent, maybe more than ever. They plays games this year at Miami, Florida, Texas A&M and Auburn and vs LSU and Ole Miss who gave them everything they could handle last year at full strength. All it takes is one loss and you’re cashing the tickets. It may sound crazy, but way more times than not Nick Saban is losing a game in the regular season.
Big Ev: Liberty over 9 wins
One of the most underrated teams in all of college football from 2020 is back in 2021 with all of their star power and their hooker loving coach Hugh Freeze. Whatever you think about Hugh Freeze, that mother fucker can coach up some offense. This is a team that mollywhopped Syracuse in the dome, beat Virginia Tech and NC State last season. Three impressive wins over ACC schools from a small independent program. They return QB Malik Willis who’s a legitimate dark horse heisman candidate and played so well last year Gus Malzahn has got to be questioning if he would still be the head coach at Auburn if he had chosen Malik Willis over Bo Nix. Liberty brings back second leading rusher (only second to Malik Willis) Josh Mack and added Utah transfer RB TJ Green. At WR Liberty brings back all but one of their 9 leading receivers last season including their two best in DJ Stubbs and Kevin Shaa. On defense they bring back all of their major difference makers including almost their entire back seven and their best defensive lineman in Durrell Johnson who had 8.5 sacks last year. In a 12 game schedule the only game that you can maybe chalk up as a loss is at Ole Miss in November. There was no team more ready to play up to its competition than Liberty last year and Hugh Freeze is gonna have the boys fired up for the revenge game of his life when Liberty travels to Oxford. Shit I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s a close game in the fourth quarter. Regardless if they beat Syracuse again (which I think they definitely should) the Flames are in a great spot to win 10 games this season. I’m all over Liberty.
Marty: BYU under 6.5 wins
Zach Wilson is gone.
Rico Bosco: Tulsa over 6.5 wins
Coming off a really strong 2020 campaign Tulsa returns 19 starters including QB Davis Brin and Shamari Brooks who’s should break the all time Tulsa rushing record this season. They have 5 games on their schedule where they should be at least 10 point favorites in UC-Davis, Arkansas State, USF, Temple and Navy. They also have three games that should be all but guarantees losses in Oklahoma State, Ohio State and Cincinnati. If these all hold true as wins and losses they should have 4 games that they need to go 2-2 in to hit this over. Those games are Houston, Memphis, Tulane and SMU. I expect Houston to be better this year with another year of Dana Holgerson at the helm under their belts but winning two of those four game is extremely doable. I think they should be able to take the game against Tulane which would obviously put them in a great spot to get over 6.5 if they can win just one of those three games.
