Following the New Year’s College Football Playoff action, bowl season continues on Friday. It will be the final day in which multiple non-playoff bowl games are played, so be sure to enjoy the festivities. Only 1 non-playoff bowl game will remain after Friday’s card.
The 4-game slate begins at 1:00 pm ET with the Armed Forces Bowl between the Rice Owls and Texas State Bobcats, which will be followed by the Liberty Bowl between the Navy Midshipmen and Cincinnati Bearcats at 4:30 pm ET. The primetime window consists of 2 games kicking off simultaneously at 8:00 pm ET when the Wake Forest Demon Deacons and the Mississippi State Bulldogs meet in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl and the Arizona Wildcats play the SMU Mustangs in the Holiday Bowl. All the games will be aired on ESPN except for the Holiday Bowl, which will be on FOX.
To get you set for the penultimate day of non-playoff bowl season, I’m going to provide you with my college football best bet for Friday’s slate. Let’s get into the analysis, and don’t forget about our NCAAF predictions for tips and picks throughout the rest of the college football postseason.
CFB Best Bet: Navy Midshipmen 1H -3.5 over Cincinnati Bearcats (-115)
Odds available at bet365 at the time of publishing. Playable to -5.5.
The story of this game – as with most non-playoff bowl games – surrounds the transfer portal, as Cincinnati’s defense is ravaged with opt-outs that are not on the depth chart ahead of the Liberty Bowl. Many of those absences are littered across the secondary and some are on the defensive line, while there will be at least one notable absence on the offensive side – QB Brendan Sorsby. Meanwhile, as is normally the case with service academies during bowl season, Navy should be pretty close to full-strength.
If you follow college football even a little bit, you know how run-heavy Navy is; the Midshipmen were 3rd nationally in rush rate this year, and it’s been that way for quite some time. Having said that, assessing its opponents’ run defense is always part of the handicap for Navy’s games. You might be thinking, if it’s Cincinnati’s secondary that’s mostly depleted, then its front seven should be mostly intact, right? Well, in terms of player availability, it’s at least better off than the secondary, but that’s not saying much; the Bearcats were dreadful against the run this year. They finished the regular season outside the top 90 in rushing yards allowed per game, 107th in PPA per rush and 114th in rushing success rate allowed outside of garbage time, and they were gashed on the ground down the stretch. In their final 4 games, the Bearcats gave up 174 yards to TCU’s Jeremy Payne, 222 yards to BYU’s LJ Martin, almost 200 combined running-back yards to a pass-heavy team in Arizona, and over 250 team rushing yards to Utah. Not to mention, they gave up at least 26 points in each of those games and exactly 45 twice.
Despite its methodical, run-heavy approach, the Midshipmen are top-40 in first-half scoring this year. How is Cincinnati going to match Navy’s scoring without Sorsby, especially if the Bearcats can’t stop the run? Sorsby’s backups have fewer than 50 combined collegiate pass attempts, and just 8 of them were this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Navy with a healthy lead at halftime.
Check out our full Liberty Bowl prediction for Navy vs. Cincinnati
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