James Madison vs Charlotte | College Football Predictions, Picks and Best Bets

[Music] it is uh the most important thing in week one for guys like us are data points and we are going to get that in this AAC versus Sunbelt Clash when the James Madison Dukes with new head coach Bob Chesney when they visit the Charlotte 49ers for an 800m Eastern time kickoff on ESPNU maybe a bit of a sicko game but we love it all right you want to talk about a line move James Madison is now favored by 9 and a half at bet us Charlotte money line is plus 265 the total is currently 48 on this so implied score is around 29 to 19 somewhere around there James Madison 6-2 against the spread as a road favorite in their first two years in FBS criminally underrated as they have covered some of these by absurd margins and I have tried to get in the way of that multiple times but this James Madison program continues to do its thing Charlotte is in year two of Biff POI uh but they were one and4 against the spread as a home dog last year now the trends certainly side with the Dukes here Kyle I have not seen a talent differential like this for a G5 game in a very long time 247 team Talent composite has Charlotte number 65 thanks to all the P4 transfers that they brought in and James Madison number 120 and still James Madison has just been rolling teams for the past couple of years what are your thoughts here really surprised urised by those Talent numbers to be honest with you U I don't I don't want to say too much other than that but I I think that um Charlotte could be an improved team by a decent amount this year um and still have a hard time being on the same level as a James Madison and then they're not healthy at all you've got uh POI coming out that was a super interesting press conference just watching that and hearing what he had to say that was so I mean it was it was like I I didn't know what what was happening there for a little bit but um what is chzn gonna do with James Madison they've had great coaching I think he's a very good coach as well um I think JMU probably comes uh becomes a little bit more run heavy this year with McLoud gone and wide receivers kind of their weakness I think it's tough to rate their defensive line it was so amazing last year I think it'll still be good better than League average but you know massive losses um and definitely lost out on quite a bit of talent Charlotte they have to get better play from quarterback we know Brown should be better um he doesn't have a lot of talent around him we don't even know who all the guys are that are going to be out for Charlotte so it's a little bit hard to talk about this game when you say okay there's going to be eight or nine starters out who are they I I don't know who's gonna be out I think it matters right like matters STS that out it it absolutely matters and it's the total's gone down a decent amount but should the total go down if it's like the best defenders that are out should it go up you know we don't know who's out and who's not out um not a deep Charlotte team though so I'm concerned about them not having any kind of depth I would definitely have to lean JMU on this new there's a part of me that wonders about that press conference right you know what Parker let's go on and get you in here brother this is I mean this one's interesting is there really a way to know what these teams are going to look like tell me tell me about these two yeah I mean I think in absence of everything else you've got to look at coaching and I'm gonna give Bob chzn the advantage he knows ball they had a crazy fun offense at Holy Cross uh Matt luuka looked really good transfer up to UNLV um and they do have a huge turnover but they I think they've got a good Duo of running backs coming in that does raise the floor pretty substantially for them uh that JMU defense was um incredible frankly in 2023 grading out I mean ridiculously high in some of those opponent adjusted me metrics uh they're going to have some uh physicality I think that that's going to be the difference in this game against Charlotte whether Charlotte is healthy or not do want a disclaimer when we tried to you know talked about locking this win in this is 6 and A2 and I'm still going to keep it on my play at 9 and a half but that is some movement and goes back to what I was saying earlier about you know timing your bets well um Charlotte was 114th in EPA per play margin 117th on offense 106 on defense last year they're really competitive in just like three of their losses the rest of them were just kind of gross you know messes all around I think that if if Charlotte is developing under Biff and is turning into a program that is going to compete at the level that could be expected out of a program like Charlotte they are still waiting to get into the crushing losses portion of the Bowen development curve there you know getting crushed crushing losses close wins winning big uh I I think they're still a little ways off of that so they do have 22 incoming transfers it's a little bit of an Island of Misfit Toys which take you shots on talent but like cavius Norton lost the job at Iowa State I'm not saying he's bad maybe he is American Athletic Conference good but uh that's just hard for me to get too excited about and the turnover although I think it's extremely likely that uh Biff pogy is just lying um that's what I would do I would I mean there's no incentive right and I would just I would just say let's get all Advantage we're going to be injured we're going to be hurt this going to be good I mean h he picked them to win the conference last year so maybe this's just a different strategy for him to mitigate expectations and maybe get an edge there um but yeah with without knowing what's going on in the field exactly with so much turnover I'm going to trust that there's an inherent stickiness to James Madison's physicality from last year and that defense even while it does regress will still outclass anything Charlotte tries to do on offense and I'm going to test the coaching Advantage with chzn so give me the Dukes to keep it rolling in the first game of the season here I'm just going to reiterate a lot of that same stuff right like James Madison has a ton of transfers uh seven of the 11 starters on offense are transfers but three of the returning starters are senior offensive linemen which should bode well for the transfer quarterback Dylan Morris and of course former North Texas running back AO ad I hope I say that right of their starting 22 15 of the starters are seniors only one of their starting 22 is an under classman and Charlotte I mean obviously the reason the line has gone and the line had dropped to 5 a half yesterday morning uh everybody was on the 49ers early this week for whatever reason and now it's all the way out because Biff announced that presser that we've been talking about that they're going to be down eight or nine starters for this one because he he said he worked them too hard in practice and they're dealing with injuries he didn't say who was out like I'm a little anxious about it he does Parker you mentioned there's no reason for him to lie but might this be no I think there's a lot of reason I don't think there's any reason for him to tell the truth all you can do is Opus skate and then hope that you get an advantage by some confusion of your opponents yeah absolutely but at the same time I don't feel like the opponent would necessarily know because they got so many transfers and you don't know yeah it's so it's a weird way to go about it but he seemed pretty serious and he seemed kind of heartfelt about it um but like like you talked about I mean the JMU coach Bob chzn he fits the mold of those Problem Solver coaches that I've been talking about he is fantastic and we've seen so far that smart schemes can outduel some jimmies and Joe's so I'm going to keep James Madison I bet it at six and a half let's go ahead and lock it in Parker and I both are going to lay the nine and a half with James Madison in Charlotte on Saturday night and uh and feel pretty good about it feel pretty good [Music] [Music]