The betting line has Oregon as a slight favorite at -1.5. It’s the lowest point spread of any of the remaining playoff games which makes sense in a 4 vs 5 game. What surprised me was that every other playoff game has a point spread of a TD or better.

Tech has a nasty defense, but their offense is just as good. They’re top 5 in total offense. However, they haven’t played against a top 20 defense yet. BYU (28th) was the best defense they played against. They played against one top 20 offense (Utah) and handled them easily.

Oregon’s offense has been tested against three top 20 defenses (Indiana, Iowa, fuskies), but only played against two top 20 offenses (USC, Indiana).

Honestly, after watching the James Madison game, I feel good about Oregon, but I’m not walking into the Texas Tech game acting like it’s a lock or anything. The offense clearly can score and they don’t really panic when stuff isn’t perfect, which is huge in a playoff game, but at the same time the defense gave up way too much for my liking.

Against JMU you can survive that. Against Texas Tech, those mistakes turn into real problems fast. Tech’s defense is legit and they’re not going to give Oregon anything easy, so if the Ducks get impatient or start pressing early, this could turn into one of those games where you’re just uncomfortable the whole night.

On the flip side, if Oregon stays balanced and doesn’t do anything dumb, they’re going to move the ball eventually because they always do. I think Oregon wins if they keep it clean and make Texas Tech earn everything, but if Tech controls the tempo and steals a turnover or two, I wouldn’t be shocked at all if Oregon is the one chasing the game late. It really just feels like one of those playoff matchups where whoever blinks first probably loses.

I think Tech will have the crowd advantage. They’re going to bring a lot of fans because they haven’t played in a major bowl game as a conference champion since 1995. They’re also Texans, so they’re genetically predisposed to spending a lot of money to go watch football. However, the Ducks seem to have a good plan in place for crowd noise as we saw in a few games this season.

I get the crowd point, and Tech fans will definitely show up, but I don’t think that’s going to decide this game. As long as they stay disciplined and don’t make it harder than it needs to be, the noise is just background. At the end of the day it still comes down to execution. If Oregon plays clean football, the crowd won’t matter much. If they don’t, then it won’t matter who’s in the stands anyway. DL and company have a lot to clean up in the next week and a half.

Oregon has played better away than at home this year, so the TT crowd might actually be advantage Ducks.