Week 8 brings the most anticipated game on No. 5 Ole Miss football's schedule against No. 8 Georgia. Both teams have performed exceedingly well this season, and that makes it particularly hard to pick a winner when speaking in terms of their previous games.
Both Georgia and Ole Miss are coming off close-call wins. Georgia's offensive struggles could have cost them their last one against Auburn. And Ole Miss barely saved itself the embarrassment of a major upset loss to a Pac-12 team.
Keeping the glaring issues aside and focusing on the odds, Georgia is the clear, heavy favorite by 7.5 points to pull this one off against Ole Miss.
Analysts and ESPN's metric system are on the same page with the odds makers.
ESPN FPI predicts Ole Miss has a slim 30.3 percent chance to win in Athens this Saturday.
Furthermore, See Ball Get Ball podcast host David Pollack thinks that the ball will be in Georgia's court with this one but it will be a narrow win.
"So, I think Georgia being at home, Georgia with the revenge factor, I’m going Georgia in this game,” he said. “I think it’s going to be good, but I think every game like this, like every Georgia score, I’m just going to copy and paste: 28–24," Pollack said on his podcast.
Pollack's prediction might come true if Georgia is able to manage and match Ole Miss's tempo and have control over the line of scrimmage.
Analyst Greg McElroy also believes that Georgia will be the one emerging victorious because the Bulldogs look like they could run the ball better than Ole Miss.
"I'm taking Georgia. I'm going to lay the points (-7.5) in this game. I love what I've seen so far from Georgia in stopping the run. I also think Georgia is an improving bunch on the perimeter. I don't think they're elite in the secondary, but I think they're improving in the secondary. I think Ole Miss could become a little one-dimensional and I also think that Georgia will be able to run the football and create some matchup advantages with their wide receivers on some downfield throws," McElroy said on Always College Football.
Georgia has all the resources to easily defeat Ole Miss, given that they can improve from their offensive shortcomings evident from the past couple of weeks.
Otherwise, Lane Kiffin will manage to take home the win, leaving the Bulldogs 5-2.