Big Ten: Minnesota vs Purdue 10/1/22 College Football Picks, Predictions, Odds

The Minnesota Golden Gophers and Purdue Boilermakers square off Saturday in week 5 Big Ten college football action from Huntington Bank Stadium.

The Purdue Boilermakers will be out to build on a 28-26 win over FAU last time out. Aidan O’Connell has thrown for 1,000 yards, 8 touchdowns and an interception on 64.7% passing but missed the FAU game due to injury while Dylan Downing leads Purdue with 204 rushing yards and a pair of TDs. Devin Mockobee also has 137 rushing yards with 2 touchdowns and King Doerue has 3 TDs. Charlie Jones leads Purdue’s receivers with 41 grabs for 533 yards and 7 touchdowns while Payne Durham and TJ Sheffield each have 100+ receiving yards this season. On defense, Sanoussi Kane has a team-high 19 total tackles with 14 solo tackles while the Purdue defense as a whole has 6 sacks and 4 interceptions this season.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers will try to build on an impressive 34-7 win over Michigan State in their last game. Tanner Morgan’s thrown for 886 yards, 7 touchdowns and an interception on 77.2% passing while Mohamed Ibrahim leads Minnesota’s ground attack with 567 rushing yards and 8 touchdowns. Trey Potts and Bryce Williams have also combined for 451 rushing yards and 4 scores this season. Brevyn Spann-Ford, Dylan Wright and Michael Brown-Stephens each have 100+ receiving yards on the year. On defense, Mariano Sori-Marin has a team-high 25 total tackles while Danny Striggow has a pair of sacks this season.

Purdue is 9-4 ATS in their last 13 games against a team with a winning record and 4-1 ATS in their last 5 games following an ATS loss while the over is 6-0 in their last 6 games following a win. Minnesota is 24-9-1 ATS in their last 34 games overall and 5-0 ATS in their last 5 home games while the over is 6-2 in their last 8 games in October.

I get the case to be made for the Boilermakers and maybe Minnesota’s going to start being more of a public team, but I don’t care. Minnesota’s been far more convincing up to this point in the season, especially after such a dominant performance over Michigan State on the road and while Purdue got the win over FAU, it’s all well and good but if Aidan O’Connell can’t go here, that’s going to make life much tougher when this was already a tall task to begin with. The Gophers have just been too good defensively early on to just look past, so give me Minnesota here.