Vanderbilt
vs.
Florida
College Football
Pick
11/9/13
Both of these teams had high hopes for the season, but things haven’t quite worked out for either of them. Now, they’re both dealing with quarterback issues due to injury. Vanderbilt will try and better its 1-4 Conference record, while Florida is looking to break a three-Game losing skid. The Gators are -10 point favorites at home at 5 dimes sportsbook with a total of 43.
The Gators won on the road last year in this matchup, but the teams looked a little different. Jeff Driskel dominated that Game, while Jordan Rodgers and Zac Stacy made it respectable for the Commodores. There are a lot of new faces for this weekend’s Game.
Quarterback Tyler Murphy doesn’t quite have the same effect for the Gators, now that they’ve lost three straight. Granted, none of those Games were all that easy, but they just looked outmatched in all of them. They made a nice second-half comeback against Georgia, and that was about it. Murphy has struggled to get things going with Florida only scoring 21 points per Game on the season. No matter how good their defense is (and it hasn’t been overly good), you need some offense to win in the SEC.
In six Games of work, Murphy has just five passing TDs, while completing only 59 percent of his passes. His 2.0 yards per carry average isn’t cutting it either. Vandy doesn’t have a great run defense, so expect the Gators to use Kelvin Taylor and MACk Brown a lot. If that doesn’t work, this is going to be a close Game.
Vanderbilt’s best Game of the season required a 17-point Fourth quarter to beat Georgia 31-27. Strangely, they did it with backup Patton Robinette. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do the same against Texas A&M last week. Now going against the Florida DBs, Robinette will likely struggle to get produce much. Even with Jordan Matthews and Jonathan Krause, Robinette is still an inexperienced freshman.
Running back Jerron SeymOur is set to get a ton of carries, as long as they can keep it relatively close. SeymOur hasn’t reached 20 carries in a Game yet, which is a surprising, but that may change in this one. He’s averaging 5.1 yards per carry for nine TDs on the year.
This is only Vandy’s third road Game of the year in SEC play and the other two haven’t gone great. They played South Carolina tough, but their rush defense isn’t going to beat teams like that. The Commodores will need to stop the Florida run Game to have a shot here. If so, Murphy isn’t the kind of QB to beat you with his arm. Then again, neither is Robinette.
This Game will come down to run defenses, and as it stands for now, Florida wins that battle.
The Commodores are 8-2 ATS in their last 10 Games following an ATS loss and 5-2 ATS in their last seven road Games. The Gators are just 2-6 ATS in their last eight home Games and 2-8 ATS in their last 10 Games following a straight up loss. The road team has covered in five straight meetings between these teams. Also in this matchup, the over is 7-1 in the last eight. Although most of those Games weren’t between backup quarterbacks.
We’re simply not comfortable laying double digits with this Gators squad. Our numbers have this right around the posted line of 10, so nothing strong here but as an opinion we’ll back Vandy plus the spot. The total is also pretty low, so we’ll go ver the posted total of 43. Vandy +10 and Over 43.