Cards-Seminoles face off in a battle of undefeateds. What’s the best part of football betting? When two undefeated Top-10 schools go head to head. The contest between No. 2 Florida State and No. 10 Louisville will give fans all that and much more. Louisville has been extremely impressive in their first two games. They beat the Charlotte 49ers 70-14 and gave a 62-28 beating to the Syracuse Orange this past weekend. Louisville’s performance has been exemplary but their opponents haven’t been. Had Louisville faced tougher opposition they surely would’ve climbed higher in the polls. Fortunately for Louisville, they’ll get their true test this weekend against the second best team in the nation. Louisville has a chance to propel themselves in the rankings, while Florida State has the opportunity to further solidify their playoff hopes.
Louisville’s 2016 season has been impressive so far, but Florida States’ has been even more so. In their debut the Seminoles won a tough fought match against No. 11 Ole Miss. The final score was 34-45 but on paper the Seminoles looked even better; they finished the day with 580 yards of total offense. The defense could’ve performed better, but when they came through when they were needed. The one drawback of their performance was the 127 yards Florida State gave up of penalties. The Seminoles made an effort to address the penalty issue and were able to cut down the yardage by half in their next game, finishing the contest with 6 penalties for 60 yards.
In Week 2 Florida State faced the Charleston Southern Buccaneers – an FCS team – who they made quick work of 52-8. Beating an FCS team is nothing to brag about, but running up the scoreboard is always something to take pride in. Florida State finished the day with 438 total yards on offense while their defense only gave up 294. With both those performances Florida State rose to the No. 2 ranking nationwide. Now they’ll put that ranking to the test when they face the Cards this Saturday. With a win they could become football betting favorites for this year’s title, but with a loss they could see their playoff hopes begin to dwindle away.
Bobby Petrino – the Cardinals’ head coach – has been extremely pleased with his squad’s performance so far. Especially when considering that Louisville is coming off an 8-5 season. 2-0 could be a great start to a turnaround season, but how the rest of this season shapes up will be determined by how they perform against Florida State, their toughest opponent yet. The Cards are averaging 754 yards per game, which is almost 250 more than the Seminoles’ total. That 754 can largely be attributed to the game against Syracuse were the Cardinals racked up an impressive 845 yards. Defensively Florida State has given up 337 yards per game while Louisville has only allotted 311. Those offensive statistics heavily favor the Cardinals, what do the odds across the top sportsbooks have to say about this contest?
Week 3 Saturday September 17th
Florida State -2 (-110) -135
Louisville +2 (-110) +115
The Cards offense has been unstoppable so far this year. But they haven’t faced a defense quite as tough as the Seminoles. The football betting odds don’t paint a clear favorite and this is shaping up to be one contest that could come down to the wire. If you’re looking for an offensive shootout, you don’t have to look much further than this matchup.