Predicting BYU at SMU in Big 12-ACC Showdown

Casey Lundquist | Sep 6, 2024

BYU wide receiver Jojo Phillips catches a 57-yard touchdown from Jake Retzlaff / BYU Photo

On Friday evening, the BYU Cougars travel to Dallas to take on the SMU Mustangs. The game, which will be broadcast on ESPN2, is the first college football game of the weekend. BYU is a double-digit underdog in this game. Today, we're predicting the winner of BYU-SMU.

By the metrics, SMU was dominant a year ago. The Mustangs ranked 8th in scoring offense and 11th in scoring defense. Meanwhile, BYU ranked 99th in scoring offense and 96th in scoring defense. Those numbers are driving the betting line for this game.

A deeper dive into SMU's 2023 performance reveals a team that wasn't as dominant as the metrics suggest. The Mustangs went 11-0 against Group of Five and FCS teams. The average scores in those games was 45-14 in favor of the Mustangs. In three games against P4 teams, SMU went 0-3 and the average score was 28-14. SMU's scoring output dropped 69% against P4 teams.

In fact, SMU's offense was worse against P4 teams than BYU's offense in 2023. The Cougars, who were one of the worst offenses in the Big 12 last year, averaged 22.2 points per game against P4 teams.

That has become a trend for an SMU program that is 2-21 in its last 23 games against P4 teams. The last time SMU beat a P4 team at home was Washington State in 2010.

On the other hand, BYU has turned September upsets into an annual tradition. The Cougars are a dangerous team if they can avoid catastrophic turnovers. We like BYU's chances to go into Dallas and pull off the road upset.

Last week, we thought the Vegas line was too bearish on a BYU team that returned a lot of starters from a year ago. Vegas had BYU by 14. We had BYU by 28 with a final score of 38-10. The Cougars ended up beating SIU by 28 with a final score of 41-13. The predictive models in Vegas aren't going to over-index on a week one game against FCS team. For that reason, we think the betting line is undervaluing BYU once again.

Jake Retzlaff will make some chunk yards with his arm and BYU's defense will force Preston Stone into some mistakes. BYU will make enough plays in the fourth quarter to pull out the win.

BYU 31 | SMU 27