A few of the early National Championship hopefuls fell last weekend, while others won in less than convincing fashion. This looks to be a wide open race this year for NCAAF betting fans, and a pair of teams that figure to be in the mix are the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. These two will meet in South bend this weekend in what promises to be one of the best Saturday afternoon match-ups.
Georgia Tech (#14) have spent the last few seasons living in the shadow of Florida State in the ACC, but it is the yellow Jackets who perhaps are the team to beat in that conference. They come into this won having won their first two games in convincing fashion, scoring 60 plus points against Alcorn State and Tulane. While this promises to be a much sterner test for Tech, don’t expect them to change how they approach the game of football.
Under Paul Johnson, GT has adopted the option offense, and while it is a source of frustration for many fans, you simply cannot deny how effective it has been. During those opening two wins of the season, Tech QB Justin Thomas only had a total of 13 passing attempts, of which he connected for 10 and 3 TD’s. The rest of the yardage that this team put up came on the ground. Teams know it’s coming, but still seem unable to stop it.
The big question that has to be asked after Notre Dame’s (#9) last second win over Virginia last week is whether or not they can still hope to challenge for a National Championship with the injuries starting to pile up. RB Taurean Folston went down for the season in the opener, and then ND lost starting QB Malik Zaire for the season in the win over Virginia.
To be fair, DeShone Kizer looked like the real deal when he took over from Zaire, and it was he who launched a missile style TD pass to the corner of the end zone to get the late win for Notre Dame. There may be some concerns defensively after giving up 27 points to the Hokies, especially with a team coming up that loves to run the ball down your throat.
Georgia Tech may well be on the road in a hostile environment, but the bookies still have them favored by 2.5. I think they will cover that quite handily, and wouldn’t be surprised to see a double digit win.
