Lines in the table below are from the perspective of the home team. ATL (Adjusted Thor Line) is a system I devised for determining line value. ATL considers several factors in setting a line. A few have to do with market indicators like sharp action and steam moves. For this reason, ATL lines are fluid and change throughout the week as information arrives, just like the actual lines. PB lines courtesy of PointsBet.
| Favorite | Underdog | PB Line | ATL | Day | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Army | Navy | -7.5 | -15.2 | Saturday | East Rutherford, NJ |
Army (-7.5) vs. Navy
ATL: Army -15.2
Saturday 2p CST
This game should be a straightforward handicap. But I struggled with it this week.
On the one hand, my system is showing over a touchdown of line value on Army. The Black Knights have won four-straight and enter 8-3. This is a team we saw give Wisconsin everything it could handle in October, a team that hung 56 points on Wake Forest in a loss.
Army just dominated a strong Liberty squad 31-16 on the road. The Black Knights have already beaten Air Force, a superior triple-option team to Navy. Army’s offense is top-20 in points, No. 1 in time of possessions, No. 2 in rushing, and is one of the best in the nation in both red-zone offense and third- and fourth-down conversion percentage. The defense ranks top-20 overall.
The 3-8 Midshipmen snuck by UCF and Tulsa by a combined seven points. The only other win is over lowly Temple. The offense has been brutal, ranking No. 115 with 20.4 PPG. Navy ranks No. 120 in SP+ projected scoring margin per game (-15.1). Navy lost by 20 to Air Force earlier this year, and the Mids are 1-4 against Army over the last five meetings. In 2020, Army dominated in a 15-0 shutout.
But on the other hand…
Army, a historically poor bet when favored by a touchdown-or-more, is 2-3 ATS in those spots this season. And despite Navy’s 3-8 record and rancid advanced statistics, the Mids have been shockingly good against the spread this season, one of only 38 FBS teams that are 7-4 ATS or better.
How is that possible? Because Navy has consistently out-performed their numerical profile on the final scoreboard in 2021. The Mids rank top-25 with a +5.9 discrepancy between their projected scoring margins and their actual scoring margins. They’re finding six points per game and mostly using them to cover in losses.
Navy’s offense stinks, but it has one thing going for it -- it takes care of the ball. The Midshipmen have only turned the ball over three times in 2021, best in the nation.
Navy lost its first two games to Marshall and Air Force by 20 points or more. But in its last nine games, eight of them against top-80 ATL opponents and four of them against top-50 ATL opponents, Navy was beaten by more than one possession only twice, on the road against Memphis and Notre Dame.
Both teams rank top-5 in time of possession and sub–No. 95 in adjusted pace. They want to keep your offense off the field and succeed, ranking top-6 in opponent plays per game and top-4 in opponent drives per game.
You’re probably aware that betting the unders in games between service academies is one of college football’s best systems. Since 2005, we’ve had 50 games between Army-Air Force, Army-Navy, and Air Force-Navy. The under went 40-9-1 (81.6%), including 21-2 since 2014.
With an over-under of 34.5 (!!!) in this game, we have an implied final score of 21-13. That’s right around the score of Army’s loss to Wisconsin (20-14) and Army’s win over Air Force (21-14 in OT).
With that low of a projected scoring range, against a Navy team that doesn’t turn the ball over and overachieves its box scores by roughly six points per game, it’ll take some guts to lay a touchdown and a hook with Army. But it’s the only play I’m able to make this weekend.
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2021: 71-66-3 (51.8%) ATS
2014-2020: 610-540-17 (53.0%) ATS
