1. Duke at Georgia Tech
LINE Duke -3.5
ATS PICK Duke
I CAN NOT BELIEVE I’m going this hard on the Duke freaking Blue Devils.
I couldn’t find any real reason to like them going into the season, I assumed they’d be the worst team in the ACC by a mile, and I was really, really wrong.
New head coach Mike Elko has done wonders right away in a 4-1 start, and it mostly comes down to one key thing: mistakes.
Duke doesn’t make them.
The concern here is the schedule so far. There’s no reason to start fitting Duke to ACC Championship rings quite yet after beating Temple, Northwestern, North Carolina A&T, and Virginia. but it won all four games by double digits, the lone loss was a 35-27 fight at Kansas, and …
Again, mistakes. Duke has only turned the ball over twice so far in five games, it doesn’t get hit with penalties, and the team is 4-0 when coming up with multiple takeaways.
And then there’s Georgia Tech. It came up with a shocking 26-21 win at Pitt last week as interim head man Brent Key is trying to open up the offense more and looking to make more big things happen. It worked with three takeaways – and a +3 turnover margin – getting the job done.
The only other win was against Western Carolina when the D generated four turnovers.
It might seem thin, but I’m buying into the turnover thing. Duke needs to lose the mistake battle by a mile, and it won’t.
It’ll be balanced offensively, the passing game will move the chains, and 3.5 isn’t enough to worry about if you think the road team will win outright.
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