Texas Tech Red Raiders at Oklahoma Sooners Betting Pick

The Texas Tech Red Raiders are headed to Norman to take on the 6th ranked Oklahoma Sooners in a Big 12 matchup at noon on Saturday. Both teams are coming into this game off of a bye after taking on Pac-12 opponents in week 3.

Texas Tech had a great start to the season with two blowout wins over very bad football teams and then failed its only real test against a then 1-1 Arizona team with a 28-14 loss on the road. While Texas Tech did get doubled up in points in that game, they only gained 88 yards less that Arizona in that game.

Oklahoma has been as dynamic as ever to start the season, but there are still a lot of questions to be raised about their defense that is still ranking 44th in total defense and 57th in opponent passer rating. Last year, Oklahoma’s defense was horrible, particularly when it came to defending the pass. They have changed the defensive coordinator and they look better, but how good are the teams that they have played?

UCLA had the worst yards per play in college football until their offensive explosion last week and Oklahoma allowed 50% more yards to UCLA than Cincinnati did. South Dakota threw for 244 yards and their performance against Houston would have ranked them 64th in total defense and 80th in yards per play given up at 5.9.

Texas Tech’s Offense vs. Oklahoma’s Defense

If I had to guess where Oklahoma’s defense stands, I suspect that they are better than last year, but their defense will likely look worse at the end of the season than it does now due to their schedule before and after. This game should be another test for this Oklahoma defense, but I don’t expect it to be a really significant one.

Last season, this game was very close even though Alex Bowman was hurt in the middle of the game. However, I think that the loss of Alex Wesley, who had 199 receiving yards in that game, and Kliff Kingsbury will hold this offense back a bit moving forward. This should still be a nice measuring stick for an Oklahoma defense that allowed 468 yards and 46 points in this game last year.

Oklahoma’s Offense vs. Texas Tech’s Defense

For Oklahoma’s offense, we should see another explosion as Texas Tech does not have the physical capabilities to stop the Sooners. Last season, Kyler Murray threw 2 ugly interceptions that led to 3 and 25 yard touchdown drives for the Red Raiders and this is the only reason Oklahoma was behind in this game. I expect Oklahoma to continue the trend of running Jalen Hurts more than they have run Kyler and Baker, which should limit the turnovers through the air.

Two weeks ago, Texas Tech had a really good chance to see where they are at against a QB with a similar skillset to Jalen. While Arizona and Khalil Tate are clearly not on the same level as Oklahoma, they still provide the challenge of a running QB that is more than willing to throw the ball downfield as well.

This should have really given the Red Raider 3 weeks to prepare for the style of QB that they will see on Saturday. The bad news for Texas Tech is that they failed this pretest, especially when you look at Khalil Tate’s 129 on 17 carries. This is something that I expect Lincoln Riley and Jalen Hurts to exploit.

Pick

This game is going to come down to just how many points can the Red Raiders put up to keep pace. With the line currently at 27, I like the Red Raiders to put up enough points to cover in this game. While this may come from a backdoor situation late or just by them hanging around for the first few quarters, I think this line is disrespecting Texas Tech too much here. Betting Texas Tech and the points at our top pay per head bookie site RealBookies.com is the way to go!

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