Texas vs. UL Monroe score prediction by expert college football model

What the analytics predict for Texas vs. UL Monroe in this Week 4 college football game.

Texas vs. UL Monroe Prediction / Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

Arch Manning steps into the QB1 role for the No. 1 Texas Longhorns this weekend as Quinn Ewers deals with an injury against UL Monroe in college football’s Week 4 action on Saturday.

Ranked No. 1 for the first time since 2008, the Longhorns shouldn’t have too much, or any, downturn on offense with Manning at the helm after his showing last weekend.

He had 5 total touchdowns against UTSA, including a 67-yard rushing score that was the longest by a Texas quarterback since Vince Young during the national championship season in 2005.

Texas comes in ranked No. 10 in scoring offense nationally, scoring 46.3 points per game on average, and sits at 6th in FBS with 342.7 yards per game passing each time out.

UL Monroe is 2-0 and sitting in second place among Sun Belt teams and can run the ball with some power, ranking 31st nationally at 207 yards per game, but is 130th out of 134 FBS schools with just under 110 passing yards on average.

What can we expect from the matchup?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Texas and UL Monroe compare in this Week 4 college football game.

Texas vs. UL Monroe score prediction

As expected, the simulations strongly favor the home team in this matchup.

SP+ predicts that Texas will defeat UL Monroe by a projected score of 50 to 4 and to win the game by a projected 46.3 points.

The model gives the Longhorns a perfect 100 percent chance of outright victory.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ model is 75-68 against the spread with a 52.4 win percentage.

Point spread

Texas is a 44.5 point favorite against UL Monroe, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook, which set the total at 52.5 points for the game.

If you’re using this projection to bet on the game, you should take ...

• Texas -44.5
• Bet over 52.5 points

Computer prediction

Other analytical models also suggest the Longhorns will dominate in this game.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Texas comes out as the expected winner in 99 percent of the computer’s updated simulations, while UL Monroe wins out in the last 1 percent of sims.

The index projects that Texas will be 43.6 points better than UL Monroe on the same field, not quite enough for the Longhorns to cover this big line.

Texas is first nationally with a 90.5 percent chance to qualify for the College Football Playoff and will win 11.4 games this season, according to the FPI’s metrics.

That model forecasts that UL Monroe will win 4.6 games and sits at No. 111 on the index’s 134-team rankings entering Week 4.

Texas vs. UL Monroe schedule

When: Sat., Sept. 21
Time: 7 p.m. Central
TV: ESPN+ and SECN+

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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