Florida State
vs.
Boston College
Football Pick
with Analysis
9/18/15
With ACC play starting up this week, both of these teams enter 2-0, but still have plenty of questions. Florida State has not played a good first half yet, while Boston College hasn’t played a team in FBS yet. Showing no respect to BC’s previous opponents, the Seminoles are an -7.5 point favorite on the road, according to the odds at mybookie.ag.
It looks like Florida State will once again be a tricky team to bet this season with Everett Golson at quarterback. While they covered in Week 1 after a big second half, they still came up short last weekend against USF. against better teams, will their slow starts get the best of them? The Seminoles led Texas State 21-10 at halftime and were actually tied with USF 7-7 at the midway point. The good news is that their run Game is flowing with Dalvin Cook, who already has 422 yards and five touchdowns after a dominant performance against South Florida. Golson has been good as well, and so far hasn’t thrown an interception, something that plagued him towards the end of last year at Notre Dame.
Boston College is a better team than FSU’s previous opponents, but the Eagles are a relatively young squad without much experience and their first two Games were against lower level teams. Sure, they beat Howard 76-0 and held them to 11 total yards, but what does that really mean? But in addition to that, it can’t be ignored that BC has played the Seminoles tough the last two years under Steve Addazio, covering both of those contests pretty easily, and only losing 20-17 last year. If Florida State has another slow start, this should once again be a tight battle.
Florida State will likely have a tougher time scoring, but if the Seminoles do reach 30 points or higher, will Boston College have the offense to keep up? Keep in mind the Eagles only scored 24 points against Maine in Week 1.
Sophomore quarterback Darius Wade is in his first season as the starter and hasn’t done a whole lot against soft competition. He’s completing 56.7% of his passes and only has two touchdowns. Of course, this BC team is run-heavy, no matter who the opponent is. As a team, the Eagles are averaging 6.2 yards per carry for 10 touchdowns. But remember, those numbers are against FCS competition. The offensive line is almost completely new this year and it’s going to be a big difference for them going against Florida State.
However, it’s not like FSU’s defense has looked dominant so far, allowing 4.0 yards per carry to Texas State and 4.1 ypc to South Florida.
But taking Boston College in this Game, even at home, may require some faith in quarterback Darius Wade and so far, there’s not much to go off of for him. The Eagles have some big wins at home throughout the years, including vs. USC last season. Will playing on a Friday night be enough to cover this one or even win? It just might be.
Our Pick – This Game opened FSU-9 and despite 65% of the wagers coming in on FSU, the line moved the other way. That’s generally a very good indicator that the sharper action is coming in on BC.
We’d agree. Had this Game been played at the end of last season, Our model would have had FSU barely on top, by 1 point. Both teams lost plenty from their offenses and the feeling here is that those losses will have a bigger impact on the Seminoles than the Eagles. Boston College +7.5