College football week 10 Friday

I was originally going to include these 3 Friday night games with my Thursday break down, but it’s been a long week and I was ready to call it a day yesterday, so I stopped after the Thursday games, keep scrolling down to see the Thursday game post.  Anyways, here are the 3 game breakdowns for Friday.  I’m not sure if there is going to be a pick yet, I’m leaning towards it, but I’ll see as I’m writing it out if I can convince myself to pull the trigger and back one of these 6 teams.

Temple (-14) at SMU:

If there was ever a team you wanted to play after a let down loss at home on national television, SMU might be that team.  However, I would caution anyone blindly pulling the trigger on Temple.  Having your season derailed is very difficult on teams, especially ones not used to being in the national spotlight.  Also, they are traveling on short rest having played Saturday night and now Friday night.  I’m not saying that you should be a backer of SMU in this, as Temple has the ability to do some damage to this struggling SMU team.  The problems is that Temple has a habit of giving up a lot of yards on the road.  Sure they solved that problem 2 weeks ago at East Carolina, holding the Pirates to less than 100 rushing yards, I’m not sure they’re out of the woods yet when it comes to road struggles.  Bottom line I can see the margin of victory in this game being anywhere from 7 to 21.

Rice (-6.5) at UTEP:

I’ve pulled the trigger on UTEP a couple of times this season and have been disappointed each time.  I’m tempted to pull the trigger on them a 3^rd time this week, but will back away from that.  UTEP has played much better the past 2 weeks since getting it’s starting qb back from injury.  Rice has performed extremely poorly on the road, allowing 223 yards on the ground and 262 yards through the air for 485 yards total.  Those stats are partially inflated due to a trip to Baylor that got out of hand quickly, but Baylor can’t account for such a high average on their own.  In conference play, Rice has been better against the run, but worse against the pass.  You just can’t trust a team laying points on the road that can’t stop anybody.

BYU (-13) at San Jose State:

Wow, three games and all three have road favorites.  If you want to back a team on Friday night I would suggest BYU.  Does San Jose State have the number 1 rated pass defense in the nation, yes they do.  Is BYU a pass first run second offensive team, yes they are.  So why am I eager to back BYU knowing that?  San Jose State hasn’t really played anybody, moreover anybody that can pass the ball.  That #1 rating on pass defense is because of them playing run first teams all season.  This will be the first true test of the San Jose State secondary.  Fresno State is the only FBS school to not rush for over 200 yards against San Jose State, but that shouldn’t be a surprise as Fresno State doesn’t have a very good offense.  BYU is tested this year having played Nebraska, Boise State, UCLA and Michigan, all within the first 4 weeks of the season.  The most impressive game they played this year to me was 3 weeks ago against Cincinnati, where they held the powerful Bearcat passing attack to just 220 yards and got 8 sacks.  Finally, BYU is coming off a bye week, and the game before the bye was against FCS Wagner, so this team is rested and ready to go.  Look for them to make a statement and roll over the Spartans from San Jose.  BYU is a pick.

There are the 3 game, and 1 pick for Friday.  Check back tomorrow for the Saturday game selections.