Arkansas
vs.
Florida
College Football
Pick
Betting Trends
10/5/13
Arkansas is a better team than a year ago, but it’s not getting any easier for them in the coming weeks. Already with a road loss to Rutgers, it’s going to take a better overall effort to get a win, or even come close against the Gators. Florida is currently a -10.5 point favorite at Wagerweb sportsbook.
The Razorbacks started with three straight wins, although none of them were anything to brag about. And then the Schedule picked up and they lost to a decent Rutgers team and to Texas A&M last week. It’s good that they could keep up with the Aggies, but in the end it wasn’t enough. Now with Florida on the Schedule followed by South Carolina and Alabama, they could easily have five straight losses entering November.
The early action at 5dimes.com shows us that 72% of the action on this Game has come in on the Gators.
The Gators are another story and it will take some improvement for them to compete in the SEC East this year. After losing to the Hurricanes at the beginning of September, they followed up with a couple ho-hum wins over Tennessee and Kentucky. They lost starting quarterback Jeff Driskel a couple weeks ago and now have Tyler Murphy leading the way. It’s going to be hard for this offense to Scorewith the better SEC teams.
LUckily for them, Arkansas doesn’t have the greatest defense, giving up 73 points in the last two Games. Murphy has looked okay so far, and should put up solid numbers in his first start at home. The Gators will focus on the running Game in this one (much like in their win over Kentucky), led by Matt Jones and MACk Brown. Jones rushed for 176 yards and a TD last week, while Brown took the backseat. Murphy can also pick up yards on the ground, which isn’t good news for the Razorbacks defense.
Arkansas is also at a loss on the other end of the field as Florida has one of the best defenses in the country. Sure, they scored 33 points last week, but the Aggies defense is mediocre at best. This is going to be a whole new battle for quarterback Brandon Allen. They run the ball a lot, but the Gators have a great run defense. Who’s going to budge? It’s hard to see Florida getting run over at home by the Razorbacks. RBs Alex Collins and Jonathan Williams lead the way with a combined 173 carries for 1,068 yards.
The Razorbacks will need to figure out how to move the ball if they want to come within 10 points. It’s very possible though, as the Florida offense won’t put much more than 30 points on the board, if they can even reach that.
The Razorbacks are 2-9 ATS vs. a team with a winning record and a putrid 1-10 ATS in their last 11 road Games. The Gators are surprisingly not much better, covering just twice in their last 10 Games and going 0-6 ATS in their last six home Games. The last time these teams played was back in 2009, but Florida has the edge going 7-1 ATS in the last eight meetings.
This is a tough Game to call. On the one hand, you’d expect that the back door would always be open for an Arkansas cover here considering the Florida offense doesn’t figure to be able to put this Game away. Believe it or not, Arkansas actually has the better yards per point numbers on both sides of the ball in this Game. But you also have to take into account here that Arkansas opened up against LA LAff, Samford and Southern Miss. That trio will make any SEC team look good.
Our Score Prediction model has Florida on top by two touchdowns, 24-10.
Just a lean for us here, but the feeling here is that with the QB problems at Florida with an offense that was already struggling, there’s the potential for Arkansas to sneak within the number. But we’d prefer to stay away from this one as Arkansas may be more of a question mark than the Gators, based on their early Schedule. Lean only Arkansas +10.5