Michigan State and Ohio State clash in a high-profile Big Ten meeting. Both teams have one loss and both teams are ranked in the top 10. Ohio State, however, is a half-game ahead of Michigan State in the Big Ten East standings.
The best online sportsbooks have released their NCAAF odds for Saturday’s game between Michigan State and Ohio State. For reasons that I will explain, you should play the spread for this game.
Saturday, November 20, 2021 – 12:00 PM EST at Ohio Stadium
The most decisive statistic in this game is that Michigan State, by far, ranks last in the FBS in limiting opposing pass yards. The Spartans allow 350.8 passing yards per game. A bad pass defense will typically either have a weak pass rush that allows the opposing quarterback to have all day to find a wide receiver or a poor secondary that allows opposing wide receivers to get open rapidly so that their quarterback can find them.
Michigan State has both. To be fair, the Spartan pass rush struggles, particularly against stronger pass protection units. Sparty has faced two teams that rank top-40 nationally in pass protection as measured by opposing sack rate. Those two teams were Michigan and Purdue.
Michigan’s quarterback dropped back 48 times. The Spartans sacked him zero times. They sacked Purdue’s quarterback twice, but he dropped back 54 times. Two sacks in 102 drop-backs against top-40 pass protection units is an extremely paltry figure.
Know for your sports betting that Michigan State’s impotence against stronger pass protection is relevant for this upcoming game because Ohio State ranks ninth nationally in limiting opposing sack rate. Buckeye quarterback CJ Stroud will have all day to throw since the Spartan pass rush will not bother him.
A struggling pass rush like Michigan State’s will make itself more vulnerable when it chooses to blitz. One weapon that the Michigan offensive game-plan was able to flex against Michigan State was the crossing route, which it had Andrel Anthony run for a 93-yard touchdown.
Spartan blitzing will open up the middle for Ohio State to have its receivers run the same sort of route. Ryan Day, for Ohio State, is famous for his team’s crossing routes.
One might think that Spartan defensive backs will focus on keeping things in front of them in order to make driving downfield more difficult for Ohio State. But we saw in the Michigan game a quarterback in Cade McNamara, a guy who does not throw a good deep ball, thrives. McNamara flourished with short and intermediate passing against the Spartan secondary.
One cannot give credit to the Michigan ground game for demanding meaningful degrees of attention from the Spartan defense because a Purdue offense that is one-dimensional given its 125th-ranked rush attack found even more success than McNamara. For Purdue, Aidan O’Connell ably found open receivers in the middle of the field, outside the numbers, and everywhere else, en route to a historic 536-yard passing output.
CJ Stroud will help pose the toughest test for Michigan State’s secondary. It is no exaggeration to say that he has three NFL-caliber wide receivers, on top of having highly-ranked pass protection as well as a significantly more productive rush attack than Purdue can claim. Jaxon Smith-Njigba has over 1,000 receiving yards while Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave are not far behind. They will add a lot to their receiving totals on Saturday.
Kenneth Walker is the centerpiece of a Michigan State offense whose lowest scoring outputs against Big Ten opponents have not coincidentally coincided with Walker’s least efficient performances.
The Spartans depend on Walker’s productivity but know for your college football pick that they will not be able to depend on him on Saturday for two reasons. One, Ohio State’s run defense is strongly improved. It is not fair to point to the beginning of the season as a basis for criticizing Ohio State’s run defense because defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs was still calling plays at that point of the season.
Since Coombs’ demotion, the Buckeye run defense has proven its value. Its biggest test came against a Nebraska ground game that ranks 13 spots behind the Spartans in rushing yards per contest. A creative Cornhusker rush attack mustered 3.3 YPC on 34 carries against a Buckeye run defense that has improved to rank 13th nationally in limiting opposing rushing yards.
Besides facing a team whose strength is run defense, Michigan State’s offense will have the second disadvantage of being forced to play catch up. It will not make sense to run when the Buckeyes build a large lead. High Buckeye scoring will compel Michigan State to pass more in order to score more points quickly. But in passing more, the Spartans deviate from their strength, which is especially important because their quarterback likes to build off of Walker’s success by running play-action and the like.
A rebuilding Spartan secondary -- one that lost its top cornerback to the NFL and four other cornerbacks to the transfer portal and that has a former nickelback starting at free safety -- will have its hands full with Ohio State’s maximally loaded pass attack.
The Buckeye offense will have too much firepower for the Spartan offense to keep up with, such that, by having to pass more, Michigan State’s ideally run-oriented offense will fail to be comfortable. Plus, the Buckeye run defense is strongly improved. For the above reasons, invest in Ohio State for your NCAAF picks.
NCAAF Pick: Buckeyes -19 (-110) with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.