Advanced Stats Preview: Texas A&M Football vs Ole Miss

Using Advanced Metrics to Preview Texas A&M Football vs Ole Miss

Headed into this game versus the Rebels, unranked Texas A&M football is a perhaps surprisingly close underdog to tenth-ranked Ole Miss. As of the time of writing, the Rebels are favored by only three—the number that is commonly thought to represent the point value of home field advantage, implying that this would be a straight up pick ’em if played on a neutral field. Texas A&M football fans may be shocked to see that the Aggies are considered so close in quality to the Rebels by Vegas, but should they be? Let’s take a look and see what a few different advanced models think of this one.

SP+ has Texas A&M Football vs Ole Miss Right on the Vegas Line

Looks like SP+ sees this one as right at the same margin that the Vegas sportsbooks have it. At the time that Connelly put this out, the line was about a point and a half further in favor of the Rebels than it is at the moment; however, Ole Miss seems to be a favorite still just by the margin of home field advantage according to Connelly’s system. This makes sense, as the two are barely separated in Bill C’s overall rankings. As I’ve mentioned before, when the projection is this close, it’s essentially a toss-up due to the way scoring intervals work in this sport.

FEI sees Texas A&M Football within a small margin of Rebels

Brian Fremeau’s FEI ratings, based on net points per drive, also see this one as a very close game. He has the Rebels as winning by a margin of 3.3, with the average projected score being 26.7-23.3 (the differential there due to rounding). So in actual possible scoring, that would look like a 27-23 victory for Ole Miss, extremely close to Connelly’s 27-24 projection.

CFB-Graphs Has Rebels as Larger Favorite

Parker Fleming of CFB-Graphs puts out these extended previews every week, and his numbers see this one as a bit more comfortable for the Rebs. Ole Miss is projected to score just under 30, and the Aggies are slated to notch around 21 or 22. There’s a lot of strength-on-strength in these matchups, but it looks like his system sees Ole Miss taking this one by way of the big play. An interesting note here: The Rebels run 5.8% more than expected, and teams run 8.7% more than expected versus the Aggies in general; if Texas A&M football sticks to what they’ve been doing on the ground defensively, that could end up being a big advantage for the Ags.