The Gold Sheet

THE PLAY: South Alabama -105

Texas State has three outright upset losses as a double-digit favorite this season, including last week's 52-44 home loss as a 23.5-point favorite against Georgia State. Texas State struggled down the stretch last season, too, losing two of its final three regular season games as a favorite. Ironically, the lone win during the home stretch of last season came against South Alabama. Perhaps GJ Kinne's fast-paced offense needs some late-season tweaks as injuries and attrition mount through out the year. We've got our eyebrow raised on Kinne's contract discussions. At the end of last week, ESPN reported that Texas State was set to make Kinne the Sun Belt's highest-paid coach with a seven-year contract. In today's college football era, do we really think a young, offensive-minded head coach is going to stay in the same location for nine years (seven plus the two he's already put in)? Perhaps we're looking a little too far into it, but that doesn't really smell right and the effort that we saw from the Bobcats' defense last week may also indicate that something is rumbling in San Marcos. Teams that lost as a double-digit home favorite in a conference game and have to travel for a conference road game the following week have gone 25-43-1 (37-percent) against the spread.

THE PLAY: Carolina Panthers +6.0 (-110)

Tampa Bay is on the second leg of a road back-to-back after playing in The Meadowlands last week. It's tough to gauge how much of that 30-7 win should be credited to the Bucs, and how much of that falls on the Giants. Obviously it's easier to make this statement in hindsight after what we saw at MetLife Stadium last week, but are we sure Carolina should be priced at the same spread that the Giants were last week? The Panthers are coming off a bye week and a near-upset of the Chiefs. Carolina is clearly playing its best football of the season right now. The Giants are essentially trying to lose, and have come pretty darn close to openly admitting it. Should the Panthers be priced the same as the Giants right now? We make this number closer to a field goal. Since Bryce Young returned to the lineup in Week 8 against Denver, Carolina's offense is No. 20 in EPA per play and No. 21 in success rate. That's certainly not earth-shattering, but it's a whole lot better than where they were in the first seven weeks of the season.