Florida
vs.
Georgia
College Football
Free Pick
with Analysis
11/1/14
It’s been a while since these teams were so far apart on the ranking scale. This is only the second time in the past seven matchups that the spread is more than eight points. The Bulldogs are -13 point home favorites against the Gators at betonline sportsbook.
Georgia has now won three straight Games in this meeting, taking last year 23-20, but in a non-cover effort as they were giving 3.5 points. As usual, they’ll be playing at EverBank field in this one and there are absolutely no trends between these teams. Over the past 10 Games, they are tied at 5-5 against the spread, with the over/under also being split 5-5.
Things have not been going great for the Gators. The writing was on the wall after they needed three overtimes to beat Kentucky at home. Their only other meaningful win came in a 10-9 road Game at Tennessee. Following that win, Florida lost their last two matchups at home to LSU and Missouri. While the Gators are coming off a bye, they are also coming off a beat down by Missouri in a 42-13 loss.
It’s been a completely different story for Georgia, who has actually been playing better without Todd Gurley. The Bulldogs have won five straight with two of those being road Games at Missouri (34-0) and Arkansas.
The Gators are struggling in all phases of the Game. against Missouri, they allowed a punt return, kickoff return, interception return and fumble return for touchdowns. That is bad. Sure, the defense played great against a bad Maty Mauk-led offense, but too much credit shouldn’t be given there.
Florida will need to Scorepoints against a Georgia defense that has been somewhat unpredictable. The Bulldogs got a shutout at Missouri, but also have given up 32 points to Tennessee and Arkansas.
Treon Harris was named Florida’s starting quarterback after Jeff Driskel failed to do much of anything for the first half of the year. As a freshman, there’s not much to go off of for Harris, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. At any rate, he should be better than Driskel’s 53% completion and 6-10 TD to INT ratio. Matt Jones and Kelvin Taylor will continue to be fed the ball on the ground, but those two haven’t broken out in a while.
On the other side, Georgia’s offense continues to gash defenses in the running Game. The Bulldogs are scoring 43.4 points per Game, but quarterback Hutson Mason only has 10 passing touchdowns. With Gurley out, Nick Chubb has been force fed the ball with 68 carries for 345 yards and three TDs over the past two Games. Sony Michel should be back in this Game and he could lighten Chubb’s work, along with Brendan Douglas. When called upon, Mason has been respectable, mainly because defenses need to put all their focus into the Georgia run Game.
Unless Treon Harris is miles better than Driskel, this Game will be hard for the Gators to win. They can be beaten up on the ground, which is exactly what Georgia will aim to do.
The Gators are 8-2 ATS in their last 10 Games following a bye, but only 10-25-1 ATS in their last 36 Games against a team with a winning record. The Bulldogs have lost Four straight following a bye and are only 3-8-1 ATS in their last 12 Conference Games.
This is a spot where the numbers point towards Georgia,, however, laying double digits in a rivalry like this is always dicey and not something we like to do.
Georgia comes in with the #1 ranked offense in the nation when using yards per point to rank. That number is a blistering 10.0. Florida comes into this Game with a defense ranked 117th out of 129 teams using the same yards per point ranking method. The best offense against one of the worst defenses spells trouble and should make it very clear why there’s a double digit pointspread here.
Another very important category that the Bulldogs lead the nation in is turnover differential at +13.
Lastly, we run Our Score Prediction model using a few different parameters. Using a full seasons worth of data, it predicts a final of 35-22 with Georgia on top. Right on the number. However, when using the last 4 Games of data only, the margin increases with a 36-18 predicted final.
Looking at the betting trends as of Tuesday, we see that 91% of the early wagers on this Game have come in on Georgia. That’s generally a major red flag from a betting standpoint. No Game is ever that much of a slam dunk in terms of picking a winner. Playing Florida here would be the classic “go against the public play”.
As an opinion by the numbers only – Georgia -13