Week 4 of the college football season is in the rearview mirror, and it didn’t turn out to be the most exciting slate. However, starting with some blockbuster matchups at the Power 4 and Group of 5 level this week, the action should only ramp up from here. With Saturday rapidly approaching, it’s time to dive into the Week 4 slate with my weekly best bets column. It was a tough Saturday i n Week 4, including a couple of tough beats, but at least we had a rocking chair winner get to the window for us with Buffalo (and on the money line!).
We’ve got a couple of high-profile matchups to headline this week’s crop of best bets, along with a few games a bit further down the board that I show value on, so let’s take a look at my college football picks for this Week 5 schedule of games on Saturday.
Penn State Nittany Lions -17 over Illinois Fighting Illini (-120)
Through the first month of the season, it looks like James Franklin and this Penn State program is well on its way to qualifying for the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. In started in the offseason, as the Nittany Lions were aggressive in changing their approach on offense by hiring offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki away from a Kansas program where he did a lot with much less talent. That move has already yielded terrific results, as this offense is 2nd in passing success rate, 3rd in EPA per pass, 9th in EPA margin and 9th in net points per drive (College Football Insiders). In fact, against West Virginia – Penn State’s biggest game of the season to date – the Nittany Lions were in the 99th percentile in the nation in explosive play rate (Game on Paper). Drew Allar looks exceedingly comfortable within Kotelnicki’s offense and it’s led to tremendous results thus far (8 TDs, 1 INT, 70.7% completion). It’s important to remember that Kotelnicki j ust saw this same Illinois defense a year ago, when Kansas racked up well over 500 total yards of offense and 7.4 yards per play in a double-digit victory over the Illini. It’s safe to say that this Penn State team is considerably better than what we saw with Kansas a season ago, so this Illinois defense certainly has its hands full.