Giving Away Money 2022: Peach Bowl — The Buckeyes have no business being on the same field as the ‘Dawgs

With the season almost over, I’m winding down the year with something a bit different. Every day, though season’s end, I’m going to give you the best analytical play for that day’s bowl games.

And our New Year’s Eve best pick is...

Peach Bowl, Georgia -6 vs. Ohio State

This spread is disrespectful as hell. Georgia is going to crush this soft-ass team. To beat the ‘DWAGS, you have to have a defense that can make life miserable on the creaking joints of their 47-year-old quarterback, lateral speed at linebacker, monstrous interior push, and a secondary unafraid to mix it up with and take on far larger, more physical wideouts — and then hope Bowers doesn’t beat you single-handedly. That’s assuming you can even handle their offensive line, the best in the country (suck it, Michigan).

Offensively, you have to try to stave off the best front seven in football to buy enough time to generate one-on-one mismatches at the slot and safety. And you must, must be able to generate the threat of the running game. If Blitz Kirby gets to tee off on a weak offensive line, it’s going to be a long, long night.

Ohio State has absolutely few of those things. They can win some one-on-ones in the secondary, for sure. OSU is far more talented at wideout. The pass rushing is great, as usual...but they were stoned by a similar OL in Michigan. And though they can run the ball, under Ryan Day, this has become a far less physical team and one that you can’t trust to hitch their wagon to the ground game and feed the backs for 35-40 carries — it refuses to win ugly, to play that sort of football that the Big 10 is known for. Even less certain is if they can run in the sort of game where they have to.

Like Alabama, it is a finesse team accustomed to out-talenting their opponent.

Ohio State don’t have the toughness here, frankly. Stroud is errant under pressure. And if teams like Northwestern can go HAM on the soft Buckeyes interior, imagine what UGA is going to do?

Did I mention that Georgia is playing a de facto home game, no less. So a spread of -6? Disrespectful, in a word.

Georgia clowns these frauds in the closest thing to a mortal lock you will find today.

UGA -10.77 to 13.28

Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Want some more of these? I crank the data every week, for every single game over at my companion site: (Almost) Giving Away Money. Check it out, and prosper.