How to think About the Military Bowl
Breaking down the numbers that matter
Virginia Tech has played 12 games this season, while Tulane, by virtue of its appearance in the AAC Championship Game, has played 13. So, clearly, there are numbers.
Lots of numbers.
The reality, though, is that most of those numbers do not matter. Bowl games have always been exhibitions to some extent. The word one hears more than any other is reward.
Bowl games are rewards for a good (sometimes great, sometimes merely decent) season.
Some guys take that notion of reward seriously and don’t do much in the form of prep. They have a good time.
But there is also this wink, wink, nod, nod of “hey, this is a business trip, and we are here to win.”
The thing is, long before players started opting out of bowl games or entering the transfer portal and foregoing the opportunity to play, there was a certain percentage of players on each bowl team that were well short of 100% invested in winning the game.
But of course, there is not data ahead of time as to who those players are. Throw in the portal entrants and opt outs, and it would be a fool’s errand to treat this like a regular season game from a preview standpoint.
So, let’s stick with the applicable numbers and see where that takes us.
What we know for sure
1) 2023 Virginia Tech was slightly higher ranked than 2023 Tulane
ESPN’s Bill Connelly, who created SP+, defines the metric as “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency.” In other words, it is a ranking that predicts the score difference between a team and the average team for all of FBS.
With that in mind, SP+ predicts that Virginia Tech (now all the way up to 46th in the country) would defeat the average team by just a slight bit more than #50 Tulane. And this is before Tulane’s coaching change and all the transfers and opt outs.
That does not mean the Hokies would beat the Green Wave had they both played this game at full strength. However, in the aggregate, the numbers suggest the Hokies were a smidge better this season.
2) The two offenses were already trending in opposite directions
Tulane scored 30 or more points in six games this season, but none since the end of October.
First 8 games: 30.7 ppg
Last 4 games: 22.5 ppg
And in the AAC Championship game, the Green Wave only notched 14 points against SMU.
Compare that with the Hokies and their 51st percentile SP+ offense:
First 8 games: 26.1 ppg
Last 4 games: 33.5 ppg
The Hokies’ offense accelerated as the season came to a close, while Tulane’s decelerated.
3) Tulane will be missing major offensive skill pieces
The Green Wave will be without three of their top seven players in overall usage:
#1 QB Michael Pratt
#4 WR Chris Brazzell II
#7 WR Jha’Quan Jackson
In contrast, the Hokies will only be missing one of their top seven in usage, and that is #7 TE Dae’Quan Wright.
4) Tulane’s slight edge on defense will likely be negated by missing players
Virginia Tech, whose defense is currently in the 68th percentile in SP+, should be at full strength for the Military Bowl.
Conversely, Tulane, which features a defense in the 71st percentile, will be missing three starters:
Darius Hodges, DE, 73.5 Def, 84.6 Pass Rush (per PFF)
Jarius Monroe, CB, 81.9 Def, 80.4 Coverage
DJ Douglas, S, 72.3 Def, 77.6 Coverage
In an even matchup, missing any one of those guys could be the difference in the outcome. Missing all three will be tough for Tulane to overcome.
Intangibles appear to favor the Hokies
Again, I will stress that bowl games are a crap shoot. There can be little rhyme or reason as to who comes ready to play and who just goes through the motions.
From the outside looking in, however, off-the-field developments all favor the Hokies:
Tulane will be without former head coach Willie Fritz, who left to take the Houston job, as well as a number of former assistant coaches
The Green Wave were a win over SMU away from their second straight New Year’s Six bowl (they beat USC 46-45 in the Cotton Bowl last year); the Military Bowl is a major step down from that
Virginia Tech has momentum from the early signing period as well as transfer portal additions; buzz around the program is that this game is all about building toward a big year in 2024
The game is in Annapolis, MD, and there will be a massive contingent of Hokie fans in attendance (and probably very few Tulane fans)
Final thoughts
Everything publicly known about the two teams as well as the matchup in general points toward a Virginia Tech victory. I would frame things a little differently, though.
Tulane still has a great running back in Makhi Hughes, and the Green Wave are playing with nothing to lose. The Hokies will have a hard time prepping because there is little data on tendencies of the remaining coaches and players.
So, Tulane could definitely pull off the win, but the likely outcome range probably extends from a 3-point Tulane win to a 21-point Virginia tech win.
That said, expect the unexpected. Players will do things they haven’t done all year. Non-contributors will contribute. Tendencies will be broken. Trick plays are likely.
In the end, it will probably feel a lot like a glorified spring game, at a nominally neutral site, against a real opponent.