Week 3 of the college football season was kind to us — we went 3-2 in our upset picks last week.
Old Dominion (+245), Cal (+100) and Vanderbilt (+175) all won handily. Jacksonville State made it a close game, too. We nearly went 4-1, but Tennessee just missed out on its first victory over Georgia in 9 attempts.
It was a great week, but we’re still down a bit on the year, so there’s more work to be done.
College football upset predictions Week 4
Here are 5 upset picks for this weekend in college football:
NC State over Duke
I’m tired of waiting on this Duke team to wake up. The Blue Devils have wildly underperformed in games against Illinois and Tulane over the past couple of weeks. Turnovers have been a big problem, but Duke’s defense has been much worse than expected as well. Last week, Jake Retzlaff rushed for over 100 yards and threw for more than 10 yards per attempt after being pretty dreadful in the Green Wave’s first 2 games.
NC State hasn’t been great either, which is probably why the Wolfpack find themselves as a dog in this spot. But given what we’ve seen from Duke’s defense, I do think the combo of quarterback CJ Bailey and running back Daylan Smothers should be enough to give the Blue Devils some problems. NC State has played 3 pretty good teams so far and has come out of it with a schedule-adjusted EPA-per-play that ranks 35th, per Game on Paper.
Pick: NC State +140 on DraftKings
Rutgers over Iowa
This looks like a case of the wrong team being favored to me. Iowa’s offense seems to have backslid following some legitimate progress that was made in 2024. The Hawkeyes are once again under 5 yards per play on the season despite having 2 full games against the likes of Albany and UMass to boost their résumés.
On the other side, Rutgers has quietly been good on offense this year. Specifically, Athan Kaliakmanis has dominated Norfolk State, Miami (Ohio) and Ohio. That win over the Bobcats from back in Week 1 continues to age well. Since then, Ohio has beaten West Virginia and held Ohio State to just 13 points in the first half last week. Kaliakmanis enters this week ranked No. 3 in the country with a dead-end throw rate of 32.9%. Lastly, Greg Schiano has excelled in this spot. As an underdog of less than a touchdown since the start of the 2020 season, Rutgers is 6-5 straight up with outright wins of 35, 27 and 14 points.
Pick: Rutgers +125 on bet365
Nebraska over Michigan
On a neutral field, I think this would be a toss-up game. Given that Nebraska is hosting and is looking for its first win over an AP Top 25 team in almost a decade, I like the Huskers here. Nebraska has lost 25 consecutive games against ranked opponents. Here it gets a Michigan team that probably doesn’t deserve to be ranked — the Wolverines were soundly beaten by Oklahoma a couple of weeks ago and otherwise have not done much of note. Against the Sooners, the Wolverines scored 13 points — 10 of which came off of a muffed punt and one 75-yard rush. Other than that, the offense accomplished very little.
Bryce Underwood was unproductive in his first road start in Norman — 142 yards on 24 attempts. Michigan’s game plan was also so conservative that he never had much of a chance to make an impact on early downs. I would expect Nebraska defensive coordinator John Butler will try to confuse Underwood like Brent Venables did throughout that Week 2 game. Meanwhile, the Huskers have an impressive road win over Cincinnati plus 2 blowout victories over Akron and Houston Christian. We don’t know what either of these teams is yet in my opinion, so give me the home dog with the more experienced quarterback.
Pick: Nebraska +120 on ESPN Bet
Tulsa over Oklahoma State
This is more of a principle play than anything else. If you look as bad as Oklahoma State has this season, I’m not sure you should be 2-touchdown favorites over anyone. The Cowboys are firmly on quit watch in my opinion, given Mike Gundy’s hot seat status and their underwhelming – to put it charitably — performances to start the year against UT Martin and Oregon.
Tulsa isn’t good either unfortunately — hence the line. The Golden Hurricane have a brand new coaching staff led by Tre Lamb and an uncertain quarterback situation. That being said, I do think Tulsa will play hard, especially if it senses an upset opportunity. Believe it or not, Tulsa actually has a long history of beating Oklahoma State — it’s done so 28 times all-time (though its most recent win was in 1998).
Pick: Tulsa +380 on ESPN Bet
Auburn over Oklahoma
John Mateer is a chaos agent. That’s a good thing for Oklahoma in most settings, but it does introduce quite a bit of variance into projections for OU. One poorly-timed interception could flip this game in Auburn’s favor. The Tigers have looked good so far this season, with Jackson Arnold in-particular excelling as a runner and, somewhat surprisingly, as a passer. Arnold hasn’t been asked to push the ball downfield too much this year, but he’s been effective at what Hugh Freeze needs him to do.
I think the spread for this game is fair. But when you try to project the range of possible outcomes for this game, I think Auburn ends up winning outright a decent amount of the time. Arnold has an excellent offensive line in front of him along with a very good wide receiver room. Oklahoma is starting a true freshman at cornerback and will be without star pass rusher R Mason Thomas for the first half of this game due to a targeting penalty. That’s potentially a massive development because Arnold has been dreadful under pressure this season — he’s 4-of-8 for 25 yards and has taken 6 sacks with 2 turnover-worthy plays in just 19 drop backs under pressure, per PFF. But without Thomas, I’m not sure how much pressure the Sooners will get in the first half.
Pick: Auburn +200 on BetMGM
Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
