Orange Bowl: No. 5 Oregon Ducks vs. No. 4 Texas Tech Red Raiders (Thursday 12pm ET – Miami, FL)
This is my favorite betting angle in the Quarterfinals of the CFP, as I feel Oregon is being overvalued coming off the win against James Madison. The Ducks are legit on offense, and I backed them on their team totals in the first round. However, playing James Madison at home is a much cushier scenario than playing Texas Tech on a neutral.
Dan Lanning needed to rip the monkey off his back in a “big game,” and while the JMU game was significant in terms of it being a CFP game, it wasn’t all that tough of a task. Yet, despite getting off to a monster lead in the game, Oregon still couldn’t slam the door on a team out of the Sun Belt. The Ducks were problematic on defense, giving up 28 points to JMU in the second half alone, and letting the Dukes backdoor cover the game. Not exactly an inspiring effort from Oregon.
Texas Tech will be well prepared and well coached in this one. The trip to Florida is a much shorter trip for the Red Raiders, and the time change will be much more significant for Oregon — especially with this game being the early kickoff at noon eastern. I expect to see Texas Tech absolutely shred Oregon’s defense, and the Red Raiders have an elite enough defense that we should see it at least slow the Ducks down.
Texas Tech feels wildly undervalued to me in this game, yet the spread keeps moving towards Oregon. I’ll wait out a better number up to kickoff given the movement we’ve seen, but I like the Red Raiders outright.
CFB Pick: Texas Tech +2.5 (-105) – see if you can wait for +3
For more analysis on this game check out our College Football homepage on DraftKings Network.
