Armed Forces Bowl Betting Preview
Tags: Sportsbetting, Collegefootball

It really seems like Missouri is going to have a bad time in Fort Worth.

Armed Forces Bowl

Missouri (6–6) vs Army (8–4)

Wednesday, 8pm, ESPN

Army -6.5/Total 54.5

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Wednesday’s lone bowl game is one bettors have had circled since the bowl matchups were announced. Army comes in at 8–4 and are probably going to be irritated because they played pretty poorly against, and lost to, Navy. It was a pretty good year for a streaky Black Knights team that won four in a row, lost three in a row, won four in a row and then lost to Navy. Four of Missouri’s six wins were against Central Michigan, SEMO, Vandy and North Texas, so not exactly a murderer’s row. They did beat a resurgent South Carolina team and Eli Drinkwitz trolled Dan Mullen after they beat Florida, ultimately ending the Mullen tenure in Gainesville so they have that going for them which is nice. That said, it feels like Wednesday might be a long night for Missouri.

Why might it be a long night? Start on defense. The reason this game was circled by bettors is because the Missouri defense has been a wet paper bag against the run this year. Missouri gives up 228.8 yards per game and almost 5.5 yards per carry. Army is…Army. They’re everything you expect them to be. They ran the ball more times and for more yards per game than any team in the country except their service academy brethren at Air Force. The fun thing about this Army team is that while they barely threw the ball, they’re efficient when they do. They only threw the ball 101 times this year and completed 54 of those attempts, but ten of them went for touchdowns.

On Tuesday it was announced that Tyler Badie was sitting this game out which is bad news because Missouri’s offense is the Tyler Badie show. Badie ran for 1,604 yards at six yards per carry with 14 touchdowns. Badie has five 200+ yard rushing games and four of those have come since October 2nd. He got better as the season progressed and only the very good defenses at Georgia and Texas A&M were able to slow him down over the second half of the season. Badie is also Mizzou’s leading receiver with 54 catches and four touchdown receptions. The quarterback position is a question mark for Missouri. Connor Bazelak has been the starter, but he got dinged up against Vanderbilt and got benched a couple of times late in the season because of turnovers and now Brady Cook is going to get the start against Army. Army has been mostly solid on defense this year. They only allow opposing teams to rush for 3.67 yards per carry. They’re 69th in pass efficiency defense, but they did play Western Kentucky and just couldn’t stop Wake Forest so that probably affected their overall numbers.

This line opened at Army -2.5 and jumped to Army -5.5 if you wonder how the betting public felt about this game and then it jumped another point when the Badie news came out. It’s fair to question Missouri’s motivation and with their lack of run defense it seems like this could be a long night for their defense. This feels like the kind of game where everyone in the world is going to be on Army and they just end up being the right side, but bowl games can be random so beware.