Best bet to take in the Purdue vs. Michigan game

Purdue so far this year has gone 2-6 overall, but are 0-5 in conference play. The only two teams they’ve beaten are Ball State and Southern Illinois in the non-conference, and they’ve lost to USC, Notre Dame, Illinois, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Rutgers. They came close to beating Minnesota and Rutgers but the rest of their games have been mostly non-competitive. In short, this is not a good Purdue football team and they are not having a very good season thus far. It is Head Coach Barry Odom's first year after taking over this program and he's had success at previous stops in his career but this rebuild looks like it might take a couple years.

The KFord Ratings have the 2025 Purdue Boilermakers currently rated as the 75th best team in the country at a -3.1, meaning against the average college football team they would be a 3.1 point underdog on a neutral field. On offense they have them power rated at 80th in the country while the defense is rated 87th in the country. Needless to say, this Purdue team is not very good and is actually about a field goal worse per the power ratings compared to Michigan State.

Michigan on the other hand is 6-2 overall and 4-1 in conference play. The two losses are at Oklahoma and at USC. They’ve beaten New Mexico and Central Michigan in blowout fashion, and have also beaten Nebraska, Wisconsin, Washington, and Michigan State.

The KFord Ratings have Michigan’s offense at 36th nationally, while the defense is at 9th nationally. The Wolverines by comparison are quite a bit better in both phases than Purdue.

As a whole, Michigan is power rated at 15th in the country with a power rating of 17.3. Purdue is currently power rated 75th in the country with a -3.1 power rating. To get the projected spread based on these power ratings you would simply subtract Michigan’s power rating with Purdue’s power rating, which gives you a spread of 20.4. Then you have to factor in home field advantage, which in this case I will make it 4 in favor of the Wolverines with it being a night game in the Big House. That would put us at a projected spread of roughly Michigan -24 against Purdue. With the current spread at most sports books currently at a -21.5 in favor of Michigan, these power ratings show a fairly decent line value in Michigan’s favor. I’m gonna side with the power ratings in this one for my best bet and go with a final score of 34-10 Michigan.

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