BetIQ Daily: Army vs. Navy, College Basketball Spread Picks, and NFL QB Passing Prop Projections
Picks for Friday and Saturday include Army vs. Navy and a college basketball total play. Also, our Week 14 QB Passing Props are included.
December 10, 2021 - by Jason Lisk
Army versus Navy is your lone Saturday football game (Matthew Pearce/Icon Sportswire)
Friday, December 10 (#15)
BetIQ Daily is back again for another weekend of action, where the traditional Army-Navy game is our only football contest on Saturday.
This post highlights a sample of picks available to subscribers, which include college basketball, NBA, and all the upcoming bowl game picks. And if you are playing in any college football bowl pools, our College Bowl Pool Picks are back and ramping up with bowls now one week away.
See all picks by subscribing or using our free one-year subscription offer from BetMGM.
2 Picks for Friday/Saturday
1) Navy +7 (vs. Army) – NCAAF Spread Pick
- Saturday, 3:00 p.m. ET
- This spread is right on the cutline of playable (52.3 percent), according to our Ensemble Forecast betting model.
- Navy sophomore QB Tai Lavatai missed two full games along with the majority of the Notre Dame loss, and Navy went 0-3 without him.
- He moved into the starting role as the season progressed, and Navy is better than its season numbers with him at QB.
2) Cal State-Northridge / North Dakota State Over 123.5– NCAAB Over/Under Pick
- Friday, 8:00 p.m. ET
- Our top playable college basketball total for Friday.
- Both teams rank in the bottom 60 in tempo, which is why the total is so low.
- Both also rank near the bottom of Division I in effective field-goal percentage and three-point shooting.
- Some positive shooting regression from either team in this matchup provides some value on the over.
About the Army-Navy Total
The Army-Navy over/under is at 34.5, and our models have it as the highest-rated over/under college football play so far in December.
Why didn’t I include it in the picks segment here? Mainly, concerns over the unique corner cases that are the service academies running triple option.
- Air Force, Army, and Navy are the only FBS schools that currently run the triple option as their base offense.
- Since 2010, games between two of Air Force/Army/Navy are 4-28 at going over.
- Since 2003 (when our database first includes historical over/unders), overs are 13-49-1 in head-to-head games involving the academies.
- The last Army-Navy game to go over was in December 2005.
Our playable college football over/unders have covered 55 percent of the time this year over a sample size of more than 300 picks. But two of those playable losses were in the Army-Air Force and Air Force-Navy games, which both went under.
Our models are built on large samples of games, and they perform well when predicting scoring for most college games. Given how rare the triple-option matchups are, this may just be an extreme outlier situation because of how these teams play.
Week 14 NFL QB Passing-Yard Prop Projections
You may not see much passing in the Army/Navy game, but we expect more of it on Sunday in the NFL. Here are our passing-yard projections for the QBs in Week 14:
| Quarterback | Opponent | BetIQ Projection | Over/Under | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mahomes | LV | 300.0 | 286.5 | 13.5 |
| Stafford | ARI | 299.0 | ||
| Brady | BUF | 297.2 | 307.5 | -10.3 |
| Allen | TB | 285.7 | 296.5 | -10.8 |
| Prescott | WAS | 281.1 | 287.5 | -6.4 |
| Murray | LAR | 279.9 | ||
| Herbert | NYG | 271.6 | ||
| Rodgers | CHI | 262.6 | ||
| Mayfield | BAL | 250.8 | 230.5 | 20.3 |
| Burrow | SF | 248.7 | ||
| Bridgewater | DET | 244.7 | 231.5 | 13.2 |
| Garoppolo | CIN | 244.2 | 249.5 | -5.3 |
| Cousins | PIT | 243.5 | 254.5 | -11.0 |
| Wilson, R | HOU | 243.1 | 240.5 | 2.6 |
| Heinicke | DAL | 242.4 | 244.5 | -2.1 |
| Carr | KC | 241.8 | 258.5 | -16.7 |
| Tannehill | JAC | 239.1 | 223.5 | 15.6 |
| Roethlisberger | MIN | 238.7 | 255.5 | -16.8 |
| Ryan | CAR | 237.0 | 231.5 | 5.5 |
| Jackson | CLE | 227.2 | 226.5 | 0.7 |
| Hill | NYJ | 221.3 | 189.5 | 31.8 |
| Wilson, Z | NO | 217.0 | ||
| Lawrence | TEN | 214.9 | 216.5 | -1.6 |
| NYG QB | LAC | 211.7 | ||
| Mills | SEA | 202.4 | 220.5 | -18.1 |
| Newton | ATL | 201.3 | 189.5 | 11.8 |
| Goff | DEN | 188.9 | 215.5 | -26.6 |
| Fields | GB | 180.5 | 185.5 | -5.0 |
Other Matchups to Watch
Here are some college basketball matchups we’ll be watching Saturday:
- Wisconsin at Ohio State, 12 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network
- Arkansas vs. Oklahoma at Tulsa, 1:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2
- St. Bonaventure vs. Connecticut in Newark, N.J., 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2
- Arizona at Illinois, 5 p.m. ET, FOX
- Kentucky at Notre Dame, 5:15 p.m. ET, ESPN
- Cincinnati at Xavier, 8:30 p.m. ET, FS1
- Houston at Alabama, 10 p.m. ET, ESPN2
Top Pick Performance Trends
Our algorithmic models use over a decade of data to predict every game across five sports.
As of post time, here are some highlights of prediction performance from our primary Ensemble Forecast model this season, for playable-rated picks (52.5% confidence or better) against game-day betting lines:
- NFL point spread picks: 39-28-1 (58%, +7.5 units)
- College football over/under picks: 173-142-3 (55%, +15.3 units)
- NBA spread picks: 13-8 (62%, +3.8 units)
To view our model predictions and picks for all sports and all games, see our subscription page.
We also have a free one-year subscription offer from BetMGM available in select betting-legal U.S. states, though some restrictions apply.
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