#299/300 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Under 51 Points – Northwestern vs Nebraska @ Dublin, Ireland, Saturday at 12:30 PM ET - We expect the defenses to control this opener in Ireland. Nebraska made a change at offensive coordinator with Mark Whipple coming in from Pitt. They also have a new QB in Texas transfer Casey Thompson. While we expect the offense to look solid as the year progresses, early in the season will be an adjustment learning the new system. Whipple had 1st round pick Kenny Pickett as his QB at Pitt which helped open things up as he watched the offense improve by nearly 100 YPG last season compared to their 2020 numbers. Prior to Pickett taking off, the Pitt offense averaged just 331 YPG their previous 3 seasons combined. Our word is Whipple wants to run the ball quite a bit if possible and his mantra has been “don’t lose the game with mistakes” especially early in the season. That tells us he will be fairly conservative. We expect NW’s offense to struggle as they averaged just 16 PPG last year which ranked them 125th nationally. They were held to 14 points or less in 7 of their 9 Big 10 games. Their QB Hilinski started 5 games last year but wasn’t great completing just 54% of his passes with 3 TD’s and 4 interceptions on the season. Nebraska’s defense held NW to 7 points last year and was solid ranking 36th nationally holding their opponents to 5.2 YPP. We expect them to be better this year. The NW defense was bad last year. They allowed 6.3 YPP after giving up just 4.8 YPP the year prior. In fact, 3 of the 4 years prior to last season, the Wildcat defense ranked in the top 25 nationally in YPP allowed. Head coach Fitzgerald is a great defensive coach and we expect a big jump from that unit this year. NW will attempt to make this a slow paced, grind it out game. That’s what we anticipate with points hard to come by. Play the Under.