Week 7 College Football: Northwestern vs. Maryland

It will feel like a trip down memory lane to Friday Night Lights in high school for six college football teams here in Week 7, as we have a trio of games on October 11. We were supposed to have four, but Memphis vs. South Florida was moved to Saturday because of Hurricane Milton.

We’ve got two Power 4 contests and we’ll get another look at UNLV, as they hit the road as a big favorite to take on Utah State. The Big Ten is represented by Northwestern and Maryland and the Big 12 is represented by Utah and Arizona State in these games. I’ll write up my strongest opinion and a few words on the others as well.

 

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For all of this week’s college football insights, refer to our College Football Week 7 Hub.

Northwestern Wildcats at Maryland Terrapins (-10.5, 45)

8 p.m. ET (FOX)

Maryland will be in search of a Big Ten victory here, something that has eluded them twice this season already. The Terps lost at home to Michigan State in Week 2 and were one of Indiana’s two victims in conference play a couple of weeks ago. The other one is Northwestern, who didn’t really fare much better against the Hoosiers.

Maryland gave up 42 points to Indiana, despite being +4 in turnover margin. Northwestern gave up 41 points and didn’t turn the ball over. So, I guess we’ll see what, if anything, that means for this one.

Billy Edwards Jr. has played great for Maryland and the running backs have been productive, but the Terps have only beaten UConn, Virginia, and Villanova thus far. Northwestern has topped Miami of Ohio and Eastern Illinois, so it has been a slow start for both teams in a lot of respects.

There was a silver lining last week for Northwestern in the Indiana loss and it’s that Jack Lausch played well coming out of the bye. The Wildcats hired Zach Lujan from South Dakota State to be their OC and it has been a messy transition. Lausch was awful against Washington three weeks ago, but seemed to have a better grasp of the system coming off the bye and I think he can parlay that into a little bit of success here.

Northwestern and Maryland have pretty similar defensive numbers when you consider what Indiana did to both of them. Offensively, yes, Maryland is better, but the UConn and Villanova games are big outliers padding their numbers a bit.

Ultimately, I just don’t think Maryland is far enough ahead of Northwestern to run and hide here in a game with a low-scoring expectation.

Pick: Northwestern +10.5

Other Friday Games

UNLV Rebels (-19, 66) at Utah State Aggies: UNLV suffered a really brutal loss last week at home against Syracuse, but now they get into conference action once again with a trip to take on Utah State. Up until the Rebels defense faltered against the Orange, they were sailing right along. The offense didn’t miss a beat, though, and that’s probably what matters more here with Hajj-Malik Williams against an awful Utah State defense.

The Aggies have allowed 6.57 yards per play on the season, which came into this week ranked 125th in the nation. They do, however, rank in the top 40 in yards per play on offense and the group has looked better in games started by Iowa transfer Spencer Petras. This is also a solid rushing attack.

I could see a lot of points in Logan here, but 66 is definitely a high total. That said, that would be my lean in this one. 

Utah Utes (-4.5, 45) at Arizona State Sun Devils: The never-ending “Will Cam Rising play?” question looms for the Utes, who got parts of two games out of him earlier this season. With Utah coming off the bye, everybody seems cautiously optimistic that he’ll be able to go. He put together a nearly flawless game against Southern Utah and then got hurt along the sidelines against Baylor when he was 8-of-14 for 92 yards with two touchdowns.

Isaac Wilson is definitely more of a risk, as he has a 6/7 TD/INT ratio and has been picked off four times in the last two games. I think Arizona State is a little fraudulent, given that they beat Kansas, Texas State, and Mississippi State by 14 combined points when lesser teams have had more success. But, I can’t trust Utah, whose stats are inflated by what they did against Southern Utah. They have a negative yards per play differential against FBS teams. This is a pass for me.

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