SP+ Predicts Georgia Tech vs Syracuse Final Score

Will Georgia Tech go on the road and get their second conference win of the year?

Aug 31, 2024; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets running back Jamal Haynes (11) runs the ball past Georgia State Panthers safety Isaiah Holland (13) in the second quarter at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

No. 23 Georgia Tech is heading out on the road this weeked for their first ACC road game and they will be taking on a Syracuse team coming off of their season opening win vs Ohio. This is going to be an interesting matchup in offensive styles, with Syracuse bringing more of a passing centric offense and Georgia Tech being one of the top rushing teams in the country. Whichever defense can come up with a stop could be the difference in the game on Saturday.

Georgia Tech remains a small favorite at most sportsbooks and Bill Connelly's SP+ sees a narrow Georgia Tech victory on the horizon. SP+ is projecting Georgia Tech to win the game by a score of 30-29 and gives the Yellow Jackets a 52% chance to win.

🍾🪩 WEEK 2 SP+ PICKS 🥳🪅

Texas 28, Michigan 21
Nebraska 30, Colorado 20
Iowa 21, ISU 14
Tennessee 34, NC St 20
Okla St 34, Arkansas 27
Kansas 31, Illinois 25

LOOK AT THAT BEAUTIFUL LATE-SATURDAY SLATEhttps://t.co/w7ALlZmRqT pic.twitter.com/nsasC6Z4Mf

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) September 3, 2024

What exactly is SP+? Here is how Connelly himself describes it:

"As always, these are based on three primary factors: returning production (final rankings for which you can find at the bottom of this piece), recent recruiting and recent history. How good have you been recently? Whom do you have coming back? How good are the players replacing those you don't have coming back? That's loosely what we ask when we're setting expectations for a team; it's also what these projections attempt to do objectively.

As always: SP+ is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date."

When talking with the media this week, Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key talked about the challenges that the Syracuse offense presents and what his defense will have to do to try and slow him down:

"When you play a team like this, when you play a quarterback like this who is a headsy player who is very smart and knows where to go with the football, you can't sit back there and play one type of coverage, you have to be able to mix things up but there has never been a guy like this not complete a pass. He is going to complete a pass and he is going to have success. So he's going to have success, right? He's going to complete passes. We have to be sure tacklers. We have to have more than one person at the barrage of the ball. We have to be able to guard our man, obviously, protect our zones, know where our drops are, know the patterns that they're running and be able to match them. It's a big challenge for us, but we've got to play well."