The most exciting time of the year: bowl season (Unless you’re Notre Dame in the midst of a pity party for yourselves). As annoying as all the opt-outs are, at times they can give us a clearer picture of a gameplan. That helps for prizepicks squares a ton, but can certainly help if you sniff it out early on a side in a game. I see one that I would’ve taken if it was a regular season game with zero potential personnel questions, so I must get involved.

We’re talking Navy! But not for the Army-Navy game this week. This game has a ton of question marks around it, but 99.9% of them will be on the Cincy side of things. I would’ve loved to have been able to hop on earlier when oddsmakers were drunk opening Navy at +6.5, but didn’t have any access to bet it. Now it’s widely available at Navy -2.5 and we can probably guess why.

Brendan Sorsby looks to be on his way out, as it has been reported that he is weighing large NIL offers from a couple bigger and better programs. Add in the seniors who are the heartbeat of this team in Dontay Corleone, Joe Royer, Evan Pryor, Tawee Walker, Jake Golday, and more. It seems like this Cincy roster is on the cusp of a mass exodus prior to this game. We likely see a squad led by freshman Samaj Jones trot out at the Liberty Bowl come January 2nd.

And regardless of if that ends up materializing or not, this locker room seems to have been gone weeks ago. After trending upwards for weeks leading up to their College Gameday appearance for their game at Utah, they got throttled in what began a 4-game losing streak to end the season that led to plenty of frustration from the coaching staff and Sorsby. The motivation is likely at rock bottom for Cincy and it’d be shocking if that didn’t reflect in the opt-out list for this one. And look, nothing is confirmed yet so we really don’t know for sure yet. But I’d feel rather confident that someone already does judging by the massive line move.

To reiterate though, this is a bet I’d feel comfortable taking without a single opt-out or transfer. Navy obviously should have no concerns with their guys transferring or sitting out to prepare for the draft. They still have the Army-Navy game this week so injuries are possible but I’d say its a fine risk to take for this one.

This is the swan song for seniors Blake Horvath, Alex Tecza, Eli Heidenreich, and more of these guys that have put together fantastic careers in Navy uniforms. It’s difficult to not want to back them strictly off of that, but certainly helps to face a Bearcats front seven that has leaked oil all year and could be missing the only decent players from it. Cincy’s run defense has been pitiful all year to the tune of just under 183 rushing yards allowed per game, good for 103rd in FBS. Which is mind boggling considering that they have Corleone lined up in the middle along with Golday right behind him. Navy will have zero issues racking up explosive rushes against whatever lineup Cincy is able to throw out there, which is huge because this Navy team is much more reliant on explosives than their teams in years past.

The Navy defense has also gradually improved in the second half of the season. The secondary still has issues but their rush defense improved after the ground game destruction given to them by North Texas and Caleb Hawkins in early November. And it’s hard to quantify that with strictly numbers because they faced Notre Dame and USF in the weeks right after. But if you watched those games, it tells a bit of a different story. 

Horvath sat out of the Notre Dame game with an injury and their defense was on the field all game. Outside of a 48-yard TD run by Jeremiyah Love, the Navy starting defense held Love and Price to a combined 22 rushes for 93 yards. The backups also surrendered a 54-yard TD run to Aneyas Williams, but kept it quiet otherwise. Same goes for the USF game, as Byrum Brown had an electric 60-yard TD run but the Bulls only produced 2 other explosive runs all game. Navy then closed out the season by holding all four ball carriers of Memphis’ rush heavy attack (Lewis, Peasant, Smith, Desrosiers) to under 40 yards each on 29 carries. They can certainly hold up against Cincy in this game.

Early bowl game bets are of course tricky in the current state of CFB because we don’t have a clue who will be playing or not until relatively close to gametime. But I feel confident that whatever news drops about this one will work in Navy’s favor and I frankly don’t think they need it too much given the matchup. Maybe this number continues to move harder in their direction as more info becomes available, who knows. I’ll hop in now just in case we don’t have a chance later on.