College Football Week 10: Michigan State, Oregon on upset alert

(3) Michigan State: @ Purdue

All of the writing is on the wall for this to be an upset.

Michigan State is ranked third, which is a lot of pressure for a team that won two games last year and is basically still learning how to win. Now you have all of that on the road against a team that has already knocked off a top team.

Michigan State gives up A LOT of yards. 425 to be exact. Against a Jeff Brohm offense, that might not end well. But for giving up that much, it doesn’t really add up that the Spartans only give up 20.5 points. Among teams giving up 410 yards or more, the closest in points per game is Wake Forest with 23.9 followed by East Carolina with 26.6.

The Brohm offense will need to take advantage of those available yards when the Spartans offer them. The Boilermaker offense has been very un-Brohm-like, as they’ve been held to exactly 13 points in four of its eight games. It’s no coincidence that Purdue has experienced all three of its losses in those games.

The Boilermaker defense is also good against the run, which as we all know, the Spartans will go as running back Kenneth Walker III goes. Walker has had success in just about every game this season en route to sitting second in the nation in rushing yards. (It’s worth noting that the only player he trails, Sean Tucker of Syracuse, has 26 more attempts than Walker.)

Purdue’s third down and red zone defense are particularly stingy. Purdue’s 24th in the nation in red-zone defense and 21st on third-down defense. That third-down number should be the one to watch against such a run dependent team.

It will come down to whether or not the Purdue defense can live up to the billing on those third downs and red zone opportunities.

Against a team that doesn’t allow many points, turning some of those Michigan State touchdowns into field goals will go a long way, while a big third-down stop deep in Michigan State’s own territory setting up a short Boilermaker field will go even further.