Northwestern vs. Penn State Prediction: How to play the over/under

Another win for Penn State has the Nittany Lions sitting just outside the top-10 in the AP Rankings and are the No. 20 team according to the Action Network’s Power Ratings.

In all likelihood, the Nittany Lions will be a top-10 team in the country after this weekend as they are a 25.5-point favorite against Northwestern on Saturday afternoon.

This is an interesting schedule spot for Penn State. The Nittany Lions are 4-0 after winning 33-14 against Central Michigan last time out. That was one of two walkover wins for James Franklin’s team, with the other coming in a 46-10 drubbing of Ohio. But Penn State also has two true road wins, outlasting Purdue, 35-31, in West Lafayette in Week 1 and then dominating Auburn, 41-12, on the Plains in Week 3.

Now the Lions get what should be a relatively easy win against a team that has lost three on the spin to Southern Illinois, Duke and Miami (Ohio). After hosting Northwestern, the Nittany Lions are on a bye and then start a three-game, make-or-break gauntlet on the road against Michigan before hosting Minnesota and Ohio State the following two weeks.

That three-game swing will be what determines if Penn State is truly a contender in the big picture, but the Nittany Lions can’t get caught overlooking Northwestern. Based on what we now know about Nebraska, Northwestern’s 1-3 record really looks poor, but this is a spot that Pat Fitzgerald thrives in.

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Since Fitzgerald took over as head coach in 2006, Northwestern has closed as the underdog in 107 games. The Wildcats have won 40 of those games, which is the most wins as an underdog of any coach in college football.

Per Action Labs, if you bet $100 on the Northwestern moneyline every time Pat’s Cats were the underdog, you’d be up $4,323, which is an astonishing 40.4% return on investment.

Whether you’re someone who believes in trends or not, that’s something to always have in the back of your mind when playing Northwestern games.

But outside of that, this does seem like a matchup nightmare for the Wildcats. While the Nittany Lions rank only 75th in success rate on offense, they’ve been able to rip big plays consistently this season and sit fourth in offensive explosiveness. That’s bad news for Northwestern, which ranks 115th in preventing explosiveness and sits 90th in defensive success rate.

With the Wildcats looking like they’re vulnerable to a big number here, the question becomes whether or not they can do enough legwork on offense to get this game to 53 points.

The Northwestern offense is nothing to write home about, the Wildcats grade out as more mediocre than anything else and Penn State doesn’t do a great job of stopping explosiveness — they rank 51st nationally — so there’s reason to believe that the Wildcats can do some of the lifting when it comes to getting this total over 52.5 points.

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