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The Georgia Southern Eagles take on the Old Dominion Monarchs in Norfolk, Virginia, on Thursday, Oct. 15. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
Georgia Southern is favored by -3.5 points on the spread with a moneyline of -176. Old Dominion, meanwhile, enters as a +3.5 underdog and is +146 on the moneyline to pull off the upset. The over/under sits at 47.5 total points.
Here's my Georgia Southern vs. Old Dominion predictionand college football pick for Thursday, October 15.
Georgia Southern vs. Old Dominion Pick: Georgia Southern Team Total Under 26.5
My Old Dominion vs. Georgia Southern best bet is on the Eagles to go under their team total. Find the best line available on our live NCAAF odds page .
Georgia Southern vs Old Dominion Spread: Georgia Southern -3, Old Dominion +3
Georgia Southern vs Old Dominion Over/Under: 45.5 Points
Georgia Southern vs Old Dominion Moneyline: Georgia Southern ML -162, Old Dominion ML +136
The good news is, Georgia Southern finally improved on defense, if only marginally.
New defensive coordinator Mike Mutz from Stephen F. Austin has put a lid on explosive plays but does trade it off for the good, old-fashioned bend-don't-break approach.
The Eagles' 47.4% Success Rate allowed ranks 106th in the country, but they still rank 84th in EPA Per Play. At the very least, the Eagles are making their opponents work for scores.
Under super duper senior Max Johnson , the offense continues to air the football out. Only Hawaii, Cal and Oregon State throw the football with more frequency (59.5%), and the approach runs well under Johnson.
He has spread the football out this season, as four receivers have 200-plus yards and a fifth is just a few yards shy.
Leading target-getter Josh Dallas has appeared and disappeared from the injury report, but he should be good to go this Thursday.
In Statesboro, this team plays exceptionally well. Just last week, Georgia Southern took James Madison down to the wire and, two weeks before that, gave Houston a bit of a run, covering a large spread.
But away from home, the Eagles have also proven capable, nearly beating Jacksonville State (+3.5) and notching a win over Coastal Carolina. That element is new this season.
We're already seeing regression from last year's 4-1 mark in one-score games. So far this season, Georgia Southern has gone 1-2 in such games.
The downfall from extraordinary to just plain ordinary pretty much happened overnight for Old Dominion . Star quarterback Colton Joseph left for Wisconsin, and the offense has fallen to the worst Success Rate in the country (31.7%).
Fortunately for the Monarchs, the stagnant offense is offset slightly by a top-10 defense by the same metric (36.5%).
To add insult to injury, quarterback Quinn Henicle is dealing with an injury and is questionable — he also left the Week 5 loss to Georgia State early.
The little bit of success has come from a handful of long runs from Henicle (17 10-plus-yard rushes) and running back Devin Roche. Nobody else on the team has 50 rushing yards, and there's almost no threat in the passing game.
In fact, Henicle is PFF's lowest-graded passer with 11 turnover-worthy plays — one on about every eight passes — by far the highest rate in the country (min. 60 attempts).
Linebacker Jackson Forrest and edge rusher Mario Thompson both have all-conference seasons loading under defensive coordinator Blake Seiler, who has now seen four consecutive seasons of solid defensive production.
Against a schedule that includes James Madison and Virginia Tech, the Monarchs have stuffed the run and mitigated damage through the air.
Georgia State exploited a handful of explosive plays, as four touchdowns in the middle of the game averaged 43 yards. James Madison found 46 points, but it could have been much worse if ODU didn't hold the Dukes to four field goals.
Unfortunately for Old Dominion, the defense always starts behind the eight ball because this useless offense continues to put the stop unit in compromising situations.
Georgia Southern opened as a -2.5 favorite on the road and was bet up to -4, which seems to be this game's resistance point.
The total opened at 52.5 and was deemed far too high, being bet all the way down as low as 46.5 before action pushed it back up to 47.5.
Although ODU runs a quick tempo (24.2 seconds between plays, 19th-fastest), inefficiency per play makes this an offense ripe for unders. It's also an offense that puts its defense in really, really tough spots.
This season, ODU's offense has possessed the ball for 47.4% of games, a mark outside the top 100 nationally. As a result, it's defending 73 plays per game (30th-most in the country).
So, despite the per-play success the defense sees, it eventually breaks down and allows scores.
But this week, we're getting on Georgia Southern on the road.
Johnson has pretty stark home/away splits this season. Of his 1,572 yards, 908 of them came in three games at home, and all three of those are his highest of the season. Of his 11 passing touchdowns, seven have come in home contests.
It's not opponent-dependent, either. Johnson accomplished that against James Madison and Houston, markedly better teams than his road games at Coastal Carolina, Clemson and Jacksonville State.
He's simply a better passer at home, and Georgia Southern is a better team in Statesboro.
ODU, meanwhile, excels against the pass. Its two defensive breakdowns came against aggressive offenses and explosive plays. Johnson targets receivers an average of 7.9 yards downfield, outside the top 100 nationally for quarterbacks (min. 50 attempts).
His downfield shots are low-percentage attempts to a receiving room that lacks a lot of downfield options. Just the kind of passing offense ODU has thrived against.
