The American Athletic Conference takes center stage to kick off the fourth week of the college football season as the Tulane Green Wave play host to the Houston Cougars. Game time is at 8:00 EST on Thursday, September 19 at Yulman Stadium in New Orleans. The game can be seen on ESPN.
Early betting lines have Tulane as 5-point favorites at home with an over/under of 60 points. Click here for a full list of this week’s college football odds.
The Green Wave enters their conference opener after going 2-1 during the early part of the season. Tulane breezed past Florida International in their opener and had an easy time putting away FCS opponent Missouri State last week. In between, the Green Wave suffered a loss at the hands of Auburn, although their defense managed to keep them in the game, which ended 24-6 with the Tigers narrowly covering the spread.
Despite the loss to Auburn, there is plenty of optimism surrounding Tulane heading into conference play. The Green Wave won seven games last season and could be even better this year. However, they have a challenging schedule ahead of them in November, so they’ll want to grab as many wins as possible early in the season.
Houston, on the other hand, enters Thursday’s game with a 1-2 record with their only win coming against an FCS opponent. To be fair, the Cougars have suffered their two losses at the hands of a pair of ranked teams in Oklahoma and Washington State. They came up well short against Oklahoma, but the Cougars beat the spread in a 31-24 loss to Washington State last Friday.
Of course, Houston also led Washington State at halftime but failed to hand onto the lead. They are also starting a stretch in which they play three of their next four games on the road. If the Cougars lose Thursday and fall to 1-3, they could be playing catch up the rest of the season and be struggling just to reach a bowl game in Dana Holgorsen’s first season by the time November rolls around.
When these two teams met last season, the Cougars blasted Tulane 48-17. However, Tulane held serve at home two years ago with a 20-17 win.
Three games into the season, it’s still hard to get a read on either of these teams. Both have either faced ranked teams or inferior opponents that they’ve beaten easily. This figures to be a fair fight, and I think Houston having played two challenging games will make the Cougars a little more ready for this game. They also had one extra day of rest, so I’ll lean toward Houston as the underdog to either keep it close or pull off the win.
I’ve long been a fan of Houston quarterback D’Eriq King. He’s the definition of a dual-threat quarterback, and he’s proven that by rushing for nearly 200 yards and five rushing touchdowns over Houston’s first three games. To be fair, he has taken a step backward as a passer this season, only completing 55% of his passes and averaging 5.6 yards per pass compared to 64% and 8.6 yards per pass last year. That concerns me a little, but part of me wants to write that off as a result of playing two ranked teams.
Tulane, to their credit, is a good defensive team that could give King and the Cougars trouble. The Green Wave could end up having one of the best defenses in the AAC this year, and we saw evidence of that against Auburn a couple of weeks ago, limiting the Tigers to just 24 points. However, the Tigers were playing a true freshman at quarterback, while the Cougars will have a senior in King. In fact, the Houston offense scored 48 points against Tulane last year with King only attempting 15 passes, so I think it’s the Green Wave defense that will have questions to answer in that matchup.
On the other side of the ball, the Houston defense has given up plenty of points this year. But again, they’ve faced Oklahoma and Washington State, two teams that can put up crazy offensive numbers. I think the Cougars will fare better against a Tulane offense that has some questions.
Even as a senior, Tulane quarterback Justin McMillan is more runner than passer, even more so than King. He completed just 10 of his 33 passes against Auburn. I know the Houston defense isn’t on that same level, but that’s still a concern. Last week against an FCS team, McMillan’s longest pass was 19 yards. He also had an interception and no touchdown passes despite Tulane scoring 58 points. Obviously, the Green Wave rely on their running game, but that does make them a little too predictable and easier to defend.
While I think Tulane will have some success running the ball, I worry about them scoring enough points to win, much less cover the 5-point spread. Despite some ups and downs this year, I like King to have a big game, especially as he gets more comfortable in Holgorsen’s offense and doesn’t have to face a ranked team. Even if this was a straight-up PK, I’d still lean toward Houston to win this game.