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wyoming cowboys vs texas longhorns-odds-picks-college football betting preview-saturday sept 16

Wyoming vs Texas Odds, Picks, Prediction: How to Bet Big Spread

Wyoming vs Texas Odds

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Wyoming travels to take on Texas, which is flying high after a win at Alabama last Saturday night.

Wyoming pulled off one of the upsets of the college football season in Week 1, beating Texas Tech as two-touchdown underdogs in Laramie. This is Craig Bohl’s 10th year at Wyoming, and the Cowboys are coming off their second straight bowl appearance.

Bohl has a stacked defense that showed what it’s capable in Week 1, but can the Cowboys slow down one of the best offenses in college football?

It’s finally time to say it: Texas is back. Steve Sarkisian’s team announced itself as national title contenders last Saturday night by going into Tuscaloosa and beating Alabama.

The Longhorns start their Big 12 schedule next week against in-state rival Baylor, so this is a bit of a lookahead spot for them.

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Wyoming’s offense is built around its rushing attack.

Andrew Peasley is in year two of being the starting quarterback, and he’s never been a consistent passer. Last season, he had a 43.6 PFF passing grade and averaged only 5.2 yards per attempt.

With that being said, he’s an effective runner. Last season, he averaged 6.9 yards per carry, but had a 79.3 PFF rushing grade.

Dating back to the start of last season, Wyoming is running the ball on close to 60% of its offensive snaps, so having an effective runner at quarterback is crucial to its offense.

Peasley was pulled from the game against Portland State on Saturday, but it was described as rest rather than an injury, so he should be good to go for this outing.

Coming into the season, the rushing attack was a bit hampered by the presumed starter — Dawaiian McNeely — tearing his ACL in the beginning of August.

The next man up is Harrison Waylee, who missed the first two games of the season. Waylee is a transfer from Northern Illinois. He had a fantastic season last year (averaged 5.5 yards per carry) and has great speed.

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The Wyoming defense showed just how good it can be against Texas Tech in the opener. Against the fastest-paced offense in the country, the Cowboys gave up two quick touchdowns and then didn’t let the Red Raiders score again until a field goal late in the fourth quarter.

Texas Tech ended up scoring 33 points, but Wyoming did a fantastic job of not allowing it to score once it crossed the 40-yard line.

Texas Tech had seven scoring opportunities, but were only able to come away with 20 points.

Image via collegefootballdata.com

Wyoming returns a whopping 10 starters on defense, with six of its top seven tacklers back from last season.

Something Bohl had to fix was tackling; Wyoming had one of the worst tackling grades in the country last year, which led to a lot of explosive plays.

The Cowboys did fantastic job wrapping up against the Red Raiders and will need to do the same on Saturday if they want to hang in this game.

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Texas has maybe the most talented offense in the entire country, but can we be honest for a second? Up until late in the third quarter, the Longhorns were pretty poor against Alabama.

Of course, the Longhorns ripped off three touchdowns in the fourth quarter on a couple of home run balls from Ewers, which inflated all of their numbers.

As you can see, their predicted points added through three quarters wasn’t great.

Image via collegefootballdata.com

Even against Rice, Texas was only up 16-3 at the half and didn’t score for the entirety of the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.

Like I already mentioned though, the Longhorns are loaded with talent on the offensive side of the ball. Ewers had a 90.6 PFF passing grade against Alabama with three big-time throws. He has all three of his top targets back from last season, including Xavier Worthy, who transferred to Texas from Wyoming.

Ewers has one of the best offensive lines in college football in front of him, with the five starters having 101 career starts between them. Ewers has only been pressured on 14 of his 78 dropbacks, which has allowed him to flourish.

Texas did lose Bijan Robinson to the NFL draft, though, and really hasn’t run the ball effectively through two games, averaging 3.5 yards per carry and ranking outside the top 100 in both Rushing Success Rate and Offensive Line Yards.

Texas is only returning six starters on defense, but Sarkisian went into the transfer portal and grabbed some great veterans to help Pete Kwiatkowski’s defense.

Something Texas struggled with last season was stopping runs at the line of scrimmage. The Longhorns were outside the top 100 in both Stuff Rate and Power Success Rate, which translated to them being 63rd in Rushing Explosiveness Allowed.

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Toggle the dropdowns below to hide or show how Wyoming and Texas match up statistically:

Wyoming Offense vs. Texas Defense
Offense
Defense
Edge
Rush Success 80 13
Line Yards 84 33
Pass Success 54 117
Havoc 101 30
Finishing Drives 55 78
Quality Drives 78 67
Texas Offense vs. Wyoming Defense
Offense
Defense
Edge
Rush Success 102 32
Line Yards 118 84
Pass Success 102 79
Havoc 28 28
Finishing Drives 89 71
Quality Drives 27 85
Pace of Play / Other
PFF Tackling 79 110
PFF Coverage 33 84
Special Teams SP+ 14 46
Middle 8 89 89
Seconds per Play 27.8 (82) 25.6 (52)
Rush Rate 62.4% (23) 50.7% (88)
Data via CollegeFootballData.com, SP+, Pro Football Focus and SportSource Analytics.

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In terms of spots, this is a bad one for Texas, which is coming off of the emotional high of beating Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The Horns have a date with in-state rival Baylor on deck, so this is kind of a sandwich spot for the Longhorns.

Wyoming’s defense has proven it can shut down a high-powered offense, and with the experience the Cowboys have coming back, they can potentially give Texas some problems.

With Peasley and its best available running back in the game, Wyoming is without a doubt live to cover this game.

I only have the Longhorns projected at -24.3, so I like the value on Wyoming at +30 (Caesars). I would play it down to +28.5.

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