The Colorado Buffaloes opened as 6-point favorites against the Arizona Wildcats and that’s where they sit on Tipico Sportsbook as of Friday afternoon despite some line movement throughout the week.
The two teams are battling to see who can avoid last place in the Pac-12 South and the worst team in the conference. It’s more of a question of who could possibly be worse than who is the better football team.
Many people have questioned why Colorado should be giving so many points if they only average a little over eight points per game against Power Five opponents. That is a fair assessment and presumably why this line shot back down to 6 and 6.5 after rising to 7.5 earlier in the week on Tipico Sportsbook.
If you’re an Arizona fan trying to get some action on your Wildcats, I hope you were paying close attention because the time to do it was earlier this week.
To me, this line at 6 is either take Colorado or pass. Both teams are coming off a bye week but it might have been an even more crucial bye week for the Buffs as the wheels had almost completely fallen off.
Head coach Karl Dorrell hinted at “subtle” changes to the offense during the bye week. They’re going to need a lot more than subtle changes if they want to completely fix an offense that ranks second-to-last in the FBS in both yards per game and points per game.
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The biggest difference from last year’s offense to this season’s offense for the Buffs is running the football. They went from a dominant running football team to a team that can barely get the ball past the line of scrimmage. But the one thing the bye week did even if there were only “subtle” changes to the offense is get the offensive line healthy. Starting tackle Max Wray who missed the USC game, is expected to play against Arizona. And the other starting tackle, Frank Fillip, had to return from injury early due to Wray getting hurt and will be closer to fully healthy for the game.
Arizona is in the bottom-10 of FBS in run defense, giving up 219.2 rushing yards per game. When the Buffs beat the Wildcats last season, Sam Noyer threw for 92 yards and two interceptions but Jarek Broussard ran for over 300 yards.
If the Buffs can rekindle the magic from the run game, I think they will win and cover.
On the defensive side of the ball, Arizona is only averaging three more points per game than Colorado and they will be without their starting quarterback Jordan McCloud. That shouldn’t be a massive hit to the Arizona offense as they still have Gunner Cruz who was the opening day starter for the Wildcats.
Cruz ripped apart BYU’s defense in the opener, going 34-for-45 for 336 yards. He slowed down significantly the next game against San Diego State before being replaced by McCloud.
This brings me to my favorite pick of the game. Under 46.5. I can’t believe this number keeps rising after opening at 43.5. We know Colorado will want to run the football and Arizona might want to establish the run early to get Cruz comfortable.
I expect the pace to be slow and both teams relying on their defense. I’m not sure either team can get to 20 points without significant help from turnovers. I would bet the Under all the way down to 45.
I lean towards CU -6 but I think Under is the play here.
All Betting Lines are Courtesy of Tipico Sportsbook.
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