09 #3 Texas vs Nebraska

Written by Dave | 01 December 2009

Nebraska (9-3) vs #3 Texas (12-0)

Line: Texas -14

Texas and Nebraska collide with the Big 12 Title at stake, and a whole lot more if you're a Longhorn.

Nebraska finished their regular season schedule with a 28-20 road win against Colorado last week. There was nothing special about the Nebraska offensive output as they gained just 217 yards against a mediocre Colorado defense. Zac Lee was 9 for 14 passing for 73 yards and a score. The running game produced 144 yards as Nebraska gained just 14 first downs in the game. The Nebraska defense gave up 403 yards to Colorado, but produced three interceptions and scored both on defense and special teams.

Texas won a shootout against Texas A&M 49-39 on Saturday in a game that possibly included this years Heisman winner in Colt McCoy and next years possible winner in Jerrod Johnson. McCoy passed for 304 yards and four touchdowns and added 175 rushing yards and another score. Texas finished with 597 yards of offense and averaged 7.6 yards per play. The Longhorn defense took an unusual beating in this game as Johnson passed for 342 yards, four touchdowns and one interception. The Aggies racked up 532 yards of offense and kept the game close the whole way.

Nebraska is 8-4 against the spread this year while Texas is 5-6-1 this year

Nebraska is 2-5 ATS in their last 7 games

Texas is 4-2 ATS in their last 6 games

Texas is 1-3-1 ATS in their last 5 games against Nebraska

Nebraska's 72 ranked offense (25.6 ppg) goes up against the 9th ranked defense of Texas (15.4 ppg)

The 3rd ranked Texas offense (43 ppg) matches up against Nebraska's 3rd ranked defense 11.3 ppg)

This will be the 14th year of the Big 12 football championship and a look at the games history shows the favorite is 9-4 straight up and 8-4-1 against the spread. The underdog has covered only in straight up wins in 2003,2001.1998 and 1996. The favorite has covered in this game the last five years.

A look at Texas this year shows they have covered 14 points in all but three games, one of those being this past week. Prior to the A&M game you have to go all the way back to the Oklahoma game on October 17th to find an opponent who finished within this weeks spread. Conversely Nebraska has has lost by more than 14 points just once this season (31-10 against Texas Tech). In their 12 games this year, Nebraska has only allowed 14 or more points in four games.

One concern for Texas is the 134 yards they allowed to Colorado last week on the ground. With a struggling passing game, Nebraska is going to depend on the running game move the ball and absorb some time of possession. Obviously Nebraska is needing a low scoring slugfest and Roy Helu will need to have some success if Nebraska is to having any scoring chances on offense. As we said, the underdog is 4-8-1 against the spread in this game, but of the four covers by the underdog, three of them came in games with a spread greater than 14 points. I think the Nebraska defense will slow down McCoy just enough to keep this one close.