Georgia vs TCU: 2022-23 CFP Final Preview, Predictions, and Prop Bet Pick

Betting trends for Georgia and TCU’s climactic contest on Monday night will give FanDuel’s users a sense of the public’s reaction to this year’s wild, wacky College Football Playoff semifinals. The shoot-out scores of both elimination games will prompt speculators to make high-side point total picks, and threaten to push a gambling line that has opened in the low 60s to an even higher mark. Georgia’s odds to prevail will be steeply priced, but maybe not as steeply as if UGA had played a solid semifinal. The specter of injuries in long games will make bettors cautious when making their prop bet choices.

Sportsbook odds won’t, however, show the exhaustion CFP fans experienced over New Year’s. Viewers have been wrung out from watching a pair of supposedly stout playoff teams, the advancing Georgia Bulldogs and the eliminated Michigan Wolverines, blow gaskets on the defensive side of the ball, leading to 2 of the most dramatic 4th quarters in the history of FBS playoff competition.

The Wolverines were the first to buckle under the pressure, allowing 264 rushing yards and 30 latter-half points to QB Max Duggan and Texas Christian in TCU’s 51-45 upset. Texas Christian’s defense terrorized Jim Harbaugh’s typically responsible offense with 2 interceptions for TDs, and a late field goal from TCU’s Griffin Kell turned a final Wolverines rally academic, as the Horned Frogs defense stood tall at the game’s conclusion.

New Year’s Eve’s first quarterfinal was highlighted by TCU receiver Quentin Johnston taking a quick throw from Duggan, jogging toward the flat at full stride to confuse the Michigan secondary, then turning on afterburners for an uncontested 76-yard winning TD. Johnston’s joyful romp should put to rest any talk of SEC and Big Ten skill players being “more athletic” than the Big 12’s finest playmakers. However, as we’ll see from main-market odds on Monday’s final, perhaps it hasn’t had as large an effect as one would assume.

Ohio State’s slashing-up of UGA’s proud defense on Saturday also came as a shock to CFP pundits. Michigan’s defense all but stone-walled Ohio State in the 2nd half when the Wolverines blew out the Buckeyes on November 26th, leading some handicappers to predict that Georgia’s top-ranked unit would quiet C.J. Stroud’s offense even more in the playoff semifinals. But in Saturday’s follow-up elimination game, Stroud passed for an incredible 348 yards, 4 TDs, and no picks, only slowed down by a late injury to NFL Draft prospect (and dynastic NFL namesake) WR Marvin Harrison Jr. OSU also found ways to run the rock and frustrate Georgia with “pesky” 1st-down conversions as the game went on, though it was a failed attempt to convert on 4th-and-medium that wound up tipping the scales.

About one year prior to the Year of COVID, fans of the Georgia Bulldogs watched an ill-advised head coach Kirby Smart surrender field position to Alabama with a ridiculous fake punt attempt that blew Georgia’s chances to win the SEC Championship. Last weekend, Smart showed his development as a strategic thinker in no uncertain terms while leading UGA to a come-from-behind victory. With some irony, UGA’s coaches made their best move of the CFP semifinal by calling time-out before the OSU Buckeyes ran their own fake punt. Georgia stopped the play to produce a turnover on downs, and went on to take the semifinal’s last, decisive 42-41 lead before Buckeye PK Noah Ruggles’ last-ditch attempt at a winner hooked badly.

Finding the Best Picks on Monday Night’s Final

Las Vegas offers a fairly standard handicap for Monday’s “David vs Goliath” match-up, with Georgia currently standing at a (-13.5) point spread. Bookmakers have a “safety” in either direction when offering a 2-touchdown point spread, since Georgia bettors could watch UGA dominate the game and still conceivably lose, while TCU could find itself leading in the latter half before suffering fatigue and an error-prone finish of the sort that led to the Kansas State Wildcats upsetting Texas Christian for the Big 12 championship.

O/U odds and moneyline offers on the championship game are somewhat more questionable. Point-total betting action has not taken the Over/Under line of (62.5) to a higher mark just yet, illustrating that FanDuel and other sportsbooks’ users could be catching on to a key angle that’s getting overlooked in Sin City (and in NYC).

Georgia’s moneyline odds of (-430) give the top-ranked Bulldogs more than a 3-in-4 shot to win the CFP championship bout outright. That’s only logical if you examine each team’s players and not the playbooks being utilized.

The TCU Horned Frogs defeated the Michigan Wolverines running a ”3-3-5” defense, an alignment more common in Friday Night Lights and in NFL “nickel” packages than in college football. The college football analyst community has a “blind spot” when it comes to Georgia and TCU’s forecast, since few of the Paul Finebaums of the world pay close attention to prep football. Deceptively, any pregame discussion of the 3-3-5 formation will predominantly focus on TCU aligning its 6-man front against Georgia’s chalkboard Xs-and-Os.

Except that the 3-3-5 is a player’s formation, not a scheme in which coaches “guessing right” or “guessing wrong” makes all that great of a difference over the course of 4 quarters. The 3-3-5 defensive alignment produces more feast-or-famine scenarios than even the “46” and other hell-for-leather defenses, since a 3-3-5 defense quickly becomes weak if certain individual players fare poorly.

For instance, the 3-3-5’s top requirement is that a team’s safeties perform at elite levels, since safeties are far more involved in run-stopping than within conventional 7-man and 8-man fronted formations. If favored Michigan had passed its way up-and-down the field, only to trip over a ball-controlling TCU in the semifinals, then Georgia’s moneyline takers might have a solid pick on their bet slips at any price. Conversely, the UGA vs 3-3-5 match-up creates more of a casino-scenario in which 1-to-4 moneyline odds are taboo.

TCU’s pair of pick-6 touchdowns on Saturday were no accident — it’s the kind of game-changing mayhem that the 3-3-5 is supposed to produce. But even though Kirby Smart has clearly adapted and progressed as a coach since Georgia began vying for national championships again, he might not be “smart” enough to focus on players instead of TCU’s unique formations.

There are concessions Smart should be willing to take in the 1st half that will pay off in dividends in the 2nd half, such as calling for more early plays to get big blockers upfield even if UGA’s running game is unsuccessful at maiden blush. Georgia’s physical tackles and tight ends must look for TCU safeties like Bud Clark, who blew the TCU-Michigan game open with the Horned Frogs’ first (not their last) pick-6 interception, and try to punish them with tough grappling and pancake blocks until TCU’s run containment starts to wear down.

Then the Horned Frogs may be compelled to switch a “3-3-5” alignment into more of a “3-5-3” alignment, as happens so often on Friday nights when a Big Nickel defense is overwhelmed at the line-of-scrimmage. That would lead to Bennett finding open looks at Brock Bowers and Arian Smith for long, decisive 3rd quarter touchdowns. But it won’t happen if UGA coaches become obsessed with “out-scheming” TCU from the start of the game onward.

The ‘Dawgs must avoid starting with too much urgency. In fact, if Georgia does pop a fancy 1st-quarter scoring play against TCU’s 3-3-5, it could just be evidence that Georgia has picked out a flawed game-plan after all. We feel that any Georgia blow-out scenario will come late in the contest, without much foreshadowing through 30:00…and only if UGA works on smashing that secondary.

WagerBop’s CFP Final Picks: TCU (+330) (1-unit or half-unit bet), 1st Half Under Total Points (31) (+104)