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College Football

Total Moves – Week 2

VegasInsider Staff
VegasInsider Staff Sports Betting Expert
5 minute read
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College Football Week 2 Total Moves

This inaugural piece last week ended up showing that it was better to be agreeable with the early market moves in the end, as a slow start in the Alabama/Duke game killed any chance of that game sailing 'over' the number.

Oregon and Auburn never threatened any of their numbers in the 50's with Auburn's walk-off 27-21 win, so staying low there proved to be the right call, even after the significant move is enough to pause on taking a worse number. With the way college football totals fluctuate throughout the week, there are going to be times where bets throughout the week will be made at worse numbers, but hopefully the work has been done to suggest that it's still the right side. Being agreeable by nature can be very hard for some, but especially early in the year, following those early moves tend to end up as the better proposition overall.

That being said, hopefully we can find a winner on this week's total disagreement and sweep the board. Here are the two games that we can hopefully grab some winners on. The moves aren't nearly as big as last week's given that those lines were out for weeks/months before kickoff and it's just been a week now, but they are moves just the same.

YTD: 1-1 ATS

Week 2 Total move to disagree with:

Nevada/Oregon from 62.5 to 61

Two weeks into the season and having the Oregon Ducks have already made this piece two times was not something I expected. But after going 'low' in their game last week for a winner, early action in the market has come right back with an 'under' play here on a total that even opened up as high as 63/64 at a book or two.

While Oregon's defense looked great against Auburn for the first 50+ minutes of that game, that performance also had the feel of that Ducks defense “shooting their shot.” Everything had been building to that crescendo of the Auburn game all off-season and the Ducks defense was definitely prepared and played up to and perhaps over their heads. Now it's just a week later, after the crushing way that they lost that game, back at home and up against a Nevada team that you are favored to beat by 3+ TD's? Pretty easy spot for the Ducks defense to mentally check out at times and let a Nevada team – that put up 30+ in their opener – threaten to hit that mark again.

Oregon's offense will get their points as well as Herbert and company look to take out some frustration from last week's results against a Nevada defense that will likely provide little resistance. The Wolf Pack gave up 423 passing yards to Purdue last week, 519 total yards, and the bulk of that came in just three quarters as a 17-0 4th quarter scoreline propelled Nevada to the comeback win. Give a much better team like Oregon that type of room to operate for 60 minutes though, and the Ducks and their uptempo scheme will put up a lot more than the 31 points Purdue had last week, especially if Nevada's defense struggles to get off the field again. Purdue was 50% in converting 3rd downs in that game (9-for-18) and 100% on the 4th down they tried (2-for-2), so Oregon's offense should be able to walk up and down the field on this team.

With Oregon's defense coming into this game with questionable motivation levels after going all out in that Auburn game after months of prep time, last week's box score and eye test from that Ducks defense might suggest a low-scoring game, but it likely ends up otherwise.

Week 2 Total move to agree with:

Illinois/Connecticut from 63.5 to 59.5

It's always tough to trust two bad teams to put up plenty of points from the standpoint that bad teams just don't execute well consistently enough. Sure, there is the approach that they are bad, and bad teams give up a lot of points, but there is always two parts to that equation, and if the opposing offense can't do anything with those turnovers, well then totals in the high 50's, low 60's are going to be hard to surpass.

Illinois and Connecticut are projected to be basement dwellers in the AAC and Big 10 West respectively, as wins will be hard to come by. The funny thing in that regard is that the winner of this game will be 2-0 SU on the year before plenty of pain comes, and should it be Illinois who gets up big early as they are expected to as 20-point favorites, sitting on the ball and letting a rushing attack that had five different guys carry the ball at least six times last week chew up the remaining clock.

A move like this was expected, and anything lower than this is where you start to worry more about it being a bad number. But unless this game is filled with multiple red zone turnovers on both ends, this will not be a game that gets much more then 50 points scored.

Other Notable Moves

Down

Southern Mississippi-Mississippi State: 52.5 to 50.5
Western Kentucky-Florida International: 59.5 to 55.5
Arkansas-Mississippi: 53 to 50.5

Up

Coastal Carolina-Kansas: 52 to 54.5
Tulsa-San Jose State: 50 to 52.5
BYU-Tennessee: 51 to 53

(Current Odds as of Thursday)

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