Quick Lane Bowl Betting Preview
Tags: Sportsbetting, Collegefootball

A confusing Western Michigan and a depleted Nevada go head-to-head in an early kickoff in Detroit.

Quick Lane Bowl

Western Michigan (7–5) vs Nevada (8–4)

11am, Monday, ESPN

WMU -7/Total 56

Head to FanDuel Sportsbook to take advantage of your $1,000 risk-free bet

Monday’s bowl action gets off to an early start because there was supposed to be a doubleheader and the game needed to wrap up in time for NFL Monday Countdown so at 11am in Detroit we get a confusing Western Michigan team against a depleted Nevada team. Western Michigan beat Pittsburgh this year and went 4–4 in the MAC so good lunch trying to figure them out. Nevada lost their coach and star quarterback and thus they come into a de facto road game as a touchdown underdog.

Western Michigan is a good offensive team and they can beat you with the pass and the run. They’re a better passing team. Kaleb Eleby threw for over 3,000 yards with 21 touchdowns and five interceptions. His favorite target by far is Skyy (two y’s) Moore who hauled in 91 catches this year for 1,256 yards. The Broncos who have two backs who share the load in the run game. Sean Tyler ran for 1,004 yards and La’Darius Jefferson ran for 836 so this is a team that can beat you in a variety of ways offensively. Defensively they’re the fourth best team in the country on third down, but otherwise don’t do a ton else well defensively. They rank in the 90s in both defensive SP+ and defensive efficiency. They’re 94th in the country in pass efficiency defense, give up 4.47 yards per carry and have just 13 takeaways, most of which are fumble recoveries which doesn’t seem sustainable long term.

Good luck trying to figure out what you’re going to get from Nevada. Coach Jay Norvell left for a conference rival and all-everything quarterback Carson Strong opted out and the rest of the Nevada team has 24 pass attempts this season. 6’9 Nate Cox will get the start at quarterback and he threw just 20 passes this year in garbage time. Nevada gave running backs coach Vai Taua the interim gig for this game, and considering his younger brother Toa is the team’s leading rusher, perhaps Nevada may try to establish the run in this game, but they aren’t a great running team. Their numbers are misleading because Strong got sacked a lot and sack yards count against rushing totals, but taking those numbers out they ran for 4.1 yards per carry which was tied for 75th in FBS. Nevada is pretty good against the pass ranking 30th in pass efficiency defense. They held Fresno State’s Jake Haener to his second lowest passing total this season and held Cal’s Chase Garbers under 200 yards. They struggled to stop the run, ranking second-to-last in the Mountain West in rushing defense.

Given the uncertainty with Nevada’s quarterback situation and a general distrust for the MAC, I have no interest in betting this game. A MAC team laying 7 is a lot of points and you just don’t know what you’re getting from Nevada. I think the only look I’m remotely interested in would be the Western Michigan team total. I don’t think Nevada’s defense is going to be sharp and Western Michigan is capable of putting up points.