CFB Best Bets, Picks and Analysis For Penn State vs. Purdue on September 1, 2022

James Franklin is hoping to get Penn State back to the top of the Big Ten in 2022, but a road game against Jeff Brohm and Purdue to start the year won't exactly make that easy. The student section in Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana is going to be a madhouse for this one, so make sure you're ready to tune in on Thursday, September 1 at 8:00PM ET. 

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For the most up to date CFB computer picks, check out our interactive predictions for Penn State vs. Purdue. It's constantly updating based on hundreds of different data points.

Penn State vs. Purdue Best Bets, Predictions and Analysis

Spread Breakdown

This is a big year for Franklin and the Nittany Lions, who bounced back from a 4-5 season in 2020 to go 7-6 in 2021. Now, the expectations in Happy Valley are somewhat high, with the Penn State faithful wanting their team to get back to consistently winning nine or 10 games per year. And while this year's team should be better than last year's, it's still a tough ask for this group to roll into Indiana and beat Purdue. 

Last year, Purdue averaged the fifth-most passing yards per game (355.4) in all of college football and the team returns quarterback Aidan O'Connell and six other offensive starters. With that said, this passing game should be humming right from the get-go, even with receiver David Bell having gone on to the NFL. Penn State does appear to have a good secondary, but Brohm is great at preparing for his opponents and he has had a lot of time to put together a game plan for this one. With that in mind, it's hard to imagine the Boilermakers not being successful through the air here. And they should also be able to run the ball effectively against a Nittany Lions defense that has some question marks in the front seven.  

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On defense, Purdue gets back eight starters and should be ready to level up on that side of the ball this season. Look for the Boilermakers to get into the Nittany Lions backfield with regularity, as Penn State is a bit inexperienced along the O-Line. That could mean trouble for a Nittany Lions running game that hasn't exactly looked all that great over the last few years. Purdue should also be able to use that push to get some pressure on quarterback Sean Clifford, who is one of the more experienced signal-callers in the Big Ten. 

This is just a tough match-up for Penn State, and it's surprising to see the team favored on the road against this tough Purdue squad. And if you need another reason to like home underdogs, our predictive analytics model, DimersBOT, gives the Boilermakers a 57% chance of covering the spread in this one. 

Over/Under Breakdown

Under Brohm, the Over is 7-5 in the 12 games that Purdue has played as a home underdog. The Over also happens to be 15-12 in games Penn State has played in the first month of the season under Franklin. Those trends aren't the only reason to like the Over in this one, but they certainly don't hurt the case either. 

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We know that this Purdue team likes to throw the football and we think this offense is going to find some success against Penn State in this game. The Nittany Lions should also be able to do their fair share of scoring, as Clifford is a great dual-threat college quarterback. It's generally tough to keep offenses led by good runners out of the endzone at this level. 

DimersBOT also happens to give this game a 53% chance of going Over 53.5, with our 10,000 simulations of this single game churning out an average of 55.0 points per game scored.

Best Bet: Nittany Lions vs. Boilermakers

It's just hard to take a Franklin-led team over a Brohm-led one with this much time for both to prepare, and that's especially true with the Boilermakers having the extra motivation of being home underdogs. Since Brohm took over as head coach of this program, the Boilermakers are 8-4 ATS as home 'dogs.

We're keeping it simple and going with Purdue +3.5 and suggest using the DraftKings bet $5 to get $200 offer mentioned at the top of this article because, even if it doesn't hit, new customers still get $200 just for joining and betting $5 on Purdue to cover. You can claim it ➡️ here ⬅️.