Florida State
vs.
Florida
Free College
Football Pick
11/28/15
Florida still has a chance to make the College Football Playoff, but they did a poor job trying to impress voters last week. The Gators will need to up their Game if they want to keep winning, even though Florida State hasn’t been overly impressive themselves. But because of Florida’s recent performance, the Seminoles are a road favorite in this one, currently -2 points at 5 Dimes Sportsbook.
The Gators haven’t had a good Game since dominating Georgia almost a month ago. Nothing has been working for them, winning 9-7 against Vanderbilt, 24-14 at South Carolina and most recently an overtime win over Florida Atlantic. While they are winning, things are about to get a lot tougher with FSU and then probably Alabama in the SEC title Game.
Florida State already has two losses and is out of the national title discussion, but could damper Florida’s hopes with a win here. Going against the Seminoles, is their poor road performances this year, having not won in their last two road Games. In fact, their only two road wins all year came more than two months ago at Wake Forest and Boston College.
The main thing for the ‘Noles is that they at least know their starting quarterback. Sean Maguire took the position and has played well, although maybe not so much against Clemson. Still, Maguire has seven touchdowns in the last Four Games with only two interceptions. Everett Golson as the starting QB is no longer something to even think about. But they still will need to be better in this Game than they were in the Clemson loss when Maguire didn’t throw a touchdown. FSU will use running back Dalvin Cook (1,475 yards, 16 TDs) as much as possible, but Florida’s defensive front has been one of the best, currently Top 10 in rush yards allowed per Game. This Game could easily come down to what Maguire can do through the air.
As for Florida’s offense, nothing has gone all too well lately and that’s why FSU is favored on the road. This offense has really struggled with Treon Harris at the helm and that probably won’t change in this Game. Harris is struggling to complete 50% of his passes and has just three TDs and 4 INTs in the past three Games. When you’re 8-for-17 for 122 yards against Florida Atlantic, something is going wrong. The Gators will try and get Kelvin Taylor going, but this FSU defense will be a little tougher than what the Gators have seen lately. Not to mention, Taylor is only averaging 3.9 yards per carry on the year.
Florida is at home and needs this win, but it’s hard to trust them at this point with how much they’ve struggled against teams with losing records.
This could be a similar result as last year when FSU won 24-19, in a Game that was even throughout. The Seminoles have a chance to break this one open if they get going, though. The road team has covered in Four straight meetings between these teams, while the under has hit five straight times when they’ve met in Gainesville.
Our Pick – Neither team overly impressive despite only 3 losses between them. But one thing they have in common is a very strong defense.
We’re going to reccomend the UNDER 43.5 here as well as Florida +2 at home as we think they eke out a close one and gain a little revenge for the past two seasons.