College Football Week 3 Upset Picks: We’re Fading Alabama

Last week was really good, adding 7.7 units to our total, bringing our season total to 9.7 units. Let’s keep it rolling!

Week 3 College Football Upset Picks

Here’s our picks for Week 3. Again, we’re just fading a bunch of road favorites, because that’s worked for us in the past.

Alabama at Ole Miss

Has Ole Miss beaten Alabama before? Yes. Have they beaten Alabama in Tuscaloosa before? Also yes. Can they do it at home, under NCAA sanction? We’ll find out!

For what it’s worth I think the spread here is a great pick. Ole Miss is a fighty team on offense, and Alabama doesn’t have a lot to gain by getting into a shootout with the Rebs. The Crimson Tide will do everything they can to slow the game down, keep the play count low, and won’t be worried about covering a huge spread.

Let’s go over the recipe for beating Alabama:

• Play at home
• Makes sure the Tide haven’t already lost a game
• Have a mobile quarterback who thrives off-script
• Pull some wild nonsense that forces the game off-script

Ole Miss are champions at the last thing. From the 2015 game:

Ole Miss ticks the rest of the boxes, especially with Jordan Ta’amu at quarterback. Ta’amu was your dime-a-dozen JUCO backup insurance policy, until Shea Patterson left. Then he turned into the most fun, dynamic quarterback they’ve had since Chad Kelly. Or Bo Wallace.

Ohio State vs TCU

This game is going to take place in Arlington, Texas, and the thing everyone’s going to worry about is TCU’s play in the trenches. Ohio State might have a defensive line capable of suffocating TCU, but we said something very similar about the Oklahoma game last year. Hopefully that game would dispel the notion that Big 12 lines are deeply inferior to their counterparts in the Big Ten.

The fact is that TCU returns a lot of experience and production on both sides of the line, and is a perfectly competent Big 12 contender. They’ll be be able to give Ohio State more trouble than these odds give them credit for, and while a Buckeye win is more than likely, it’s not a sure thing.

This game is going to be a real challenge for Ohio State, who have yet to face real competition or to travel at all.

This game is going to be a real challenge for Ohio State, who have yet to face real competition or to travel at all. Beating Oregon State at home is great, and dunking on Rutgers is a national pastime, but going on the road to play an elite out-of-conference team is another matter entirely. Look for the Buckeyes to underperform in this game.

Georgia Tech at Pittsburgh

Here’s what’s fun about this game: everyone who’s fading Pitt just watched them lose to Penn State, one of the best teams in the country. Georgia Tech is not Penn State, and they play a unique game that lets them over-perform against teams that haven’t seen it before. Pitt has seen it before, like in 2016 when they won this game at home, or in 2015 when they won it on the road.

Pitt’s a very good team, and a lot of the things that plagued them last week won’t be present this week. Trace McSorley isn’t here to take the top off the defense. Georgia Tech’s linemen are a lot closer in size and talent to Pitt’s than Penn State’s, and Pitt might even have the advantage.