Marshall travels to Georgia Southern for game two of back-to-back road contests after surrendering 23 points against Old Dominion last week, the Monarchs' highest point total of the season. Stylistically, this is far from an ideal matchup for the Thundering Herd. Led by QB Max Johnson, the Eagles boast a top-50 passing attack in terms of success rate matched up against a Marshall defense ranking bottom 20 in both passing success rate allowed and EPA per dropback.
While it’s not an incredible difference, the Eagles have a noticeable advantage defensively as well. Georgia Southern ranks 49th in EPA per play defensively compared to Marshall in 68th. A key spot for this matchup will be third-down attempts, where the Georgia Southern defense allows only a 35.1% conversion rate (28th in FBS), while the Marshall offense converts only 39.3% of its third-down attempts (79th in FBS). Georgia Southern is 7-1 against the spread this season, and I’ll back the Eagles to keep that trend rolling against Marshall.
Marshall vs Georgia Southern prediction: Georgia Southern Eagles -10.5 (-110) available at time of publishing.
