Alabama vs. Georgia score prediction by expert football model

What the analytics predict for Alabama vs. Georgia in this Week 5 college football game from an expert model that projects scores.

Alabama vs. Georgia game score prediction 2025 | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

No. 5 Georgia returns home between the hedges to host No. 17 Alabama in college football’s game of the week on Saturday night. Here is the latest prediction for the matchup from an expert football model that projects scores.

Alabama’s first time on the road this season resulted in disaster, coming out the wrong end of a two-touchdown loss at then-unranked Florida State, raising even more pressing questions around the tenure of second-year head coach Kalen DeBoer.

DeBoer’s program is just 2-4 away from home the last 6 times out, and now heads into a red and black cauldron at Sanford Stadium, where Georgia has won its last 33 straight games.

The reigning SEC champion Bulldogs are coming off a spirited comeback 44-41 victory on the road against rival Tennessee, a day that head coach Kirby Smart said Gunner Stockton came of age at the quarterback position.

Alabama has dominated the series against Georgia recently, winning all but one of their last 10 meetings, with the exception being the 2022 national championship game, the first of the Bulldogs’ two straight recent national titles.

But this is their first matchup in Athens in a decade, since Oct. 3, 2015, before Kirby Smart took over, a 38-10 victory for No. 13 Alabama over then-No. 8 Georgia.

Nothing will be set in stone as far as the SEC championship race or the College Football Playoff picture this early in the season, but it’s a sure thing the selection committee will refer to what happens in this game when they begin their deliberations.

What do the analytics suggest for when the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs meet in this crucial SEC test?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to see how Alabama and Georgia compare in this Week 5 college football game.

Alabama vs. Georgia score prediction

Athens could become Upset City on Saturday night, according to the model’s latest prediction for this SEC rivalry game.

That’s right, even as most analysts are taking the Bulldogs, this projection finds the Crimson Tide in prime position to pull off an upset, even if by a very close margin.

SP+ predicts that Alabama will defeat Georgia by a projected score of 27 to 26 and to win the game by an expected margin of just 0.7 points in the process.

The model gives the Crimson Tide a narrow 52 percent chance of victory over the Bulldogs.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ college football prediction model is 94-101 against the spread with a 48.2 win percentage.

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How to pick the game

The bookies are still giving the Bulldogs a slight edge over the Crimson Tide.

Georgia is a 2.5 point favorite against Alabama, according to the updated game lines posted to FanDuel Sportsbook entering this weekend.

FanDuel lists the total at 53.5 points for the matchup.

And it set the moneyline odds for Georgia at -154 and for Alabama at +128 to win outright.

If you’re using this prediction to bet on the game, you should take...

• Alabama +2.5
• Crimson Tide to win +128
• Bet under 53.5 points

That’s not what most bettors are doing when judging this matchup, according to the latest spread consensus picks for the game.

Georgia is getting 67 percent of bets to win the game by at least a field goal and cover the spread to avoid the upset at home.

The other 33 percent of wagers project Alabama will either defeat the Bulldogs outright in an upset, or will keep the final margin under a field goal in a loss.

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Computer predictions

Other football analytical models are taking a different view of the matchup, and still side with the home team in this SEC rivalry.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Georgia is the narrow favorite in the contest, coming out ahead in the majority 54.8 percent of the computer’s updated simulations of the game.

That leaves Alabama as the presumptive winner in the remaining 45.2 percent of sims.

How does that translate into an expected margin of victory in the game? As the close prediction would indicate, the computers also foresee a close result on the scoreboard.

Georgia is projected to be just 1.1 points better than Alabama on the same field in both teams’ current form, according to the model’s 20,000 simulations.

• Georgia: 54.8% chance to win
• Alabama: 45.2% chance to win
• Prediction: Georgia by 1
• ATS pick: Alabama +2.5

How accurate was the College Football Power Index computer prediction model last Saturday?

Projecting the games a week ago, the Power Index models correctly predicted 72.3 percent of all games and hit 52.3 percent against the spread.

Predicting a total of 799 college football games a year ago, the Power Index computers were correct for 70.964 percent of their final picks, ranking eighth nationally out of 55 other football models.

Over the last decade, the Football Power Index has proven correct on 75 percent of FBS college football game predictions, including in 73 percent of matchups when it favored a team with at least 70 percent likelihood to win.

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How to watch Alabama vs. Georgia

When: Sat., Sept. 27
Where: Georgia

Time: 7:30 p.m. Eastern
TV: ABC network

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