Houston, we have a problem, and the problem is scoring points.
First-year head coach Willie Fritz is no stranger to early tenure hiccups, but the Houston Cougars’ offense is abysmal. Meanwhile, the TCU Horned Frogs have no trouble scoring but haven’t exactly been successful in keeping their opponents off the board.
What happens when the Big 12’s worst defense faces its worst offense? Take a look at our Houston vs. TCU prediction and find out.
Houston vs. TCU Betting Preview
All Houston vs. TCU odds are from DraftKings Sportsbook and are correct as of Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. The CFN Spread comes from College Football Network’s Football Playoff Meter.
- CFN FPM Spread
TCU -9 - Spread
TCU -16.5 - Moneyline
TCU -800, Houston +550 - Over/Under
49.5 points - Game Time
Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m. ET - Location
Amon G. Carter Stadium, Fort Worth, Texas - Predicted Weather at Kick
85 degrees, sunny, 8 mph winds - How To Watch
ESPN
College Football Network’s Football Playoff Meter and Vegas vary greatly on this one, as both have the Horned Frogs as favorites but differ on the extent. With a spread of 16.5 points and a total of 49.5, Vegas hates the Houston offense and implies a final score close to 33-17 in favor of the Horned Frogs.
MORE: CFN Betting Parlay Calculator
The spread has dropped from 17.5 to 16.5, while the total has remained largely unchanged, though most of the bets have been on the over.
Houston’s Winning Probability
The Football Playoff Meter thinks a bit more of the Cougars in this one than the oddsmakers do.
FPM has Houston as a nine-point underdog, giving it a win probability of 24.7%. Unfortunately for the Cougars, that represents the third-highest win probability of any game remaining on the schedule, as Houston is an underdog in every remaining game, according to the metric.
The Cougars’ win probabilities for the rest of the season are listed below.
- at TCU: 24.7%
- at Kansas: 24.9%
- vs. Utah: 18.4%
- vs. Kansas State: 20.4%
- at Arizona: 10.9%
- vs. Baylor: 42.6%
- at BYU: 11.7%
TCU’s Winning Probability
Conversely, TCU has a 75.3% chance to win on Saturday. A win is vital to the success of their season because the Horned Frogs don’t have a game left on the schedule as easy as Saturday’s.
TCU is favored in four of its remaining seven games, but three of those are just barely better than a coin toss. The Horned Frogs’ win probabilities for the rest of the season are listed below.
- vs. Houston: 75.3%
- at Utah: 25.1%
- vs. Texas Tech: 52.5%
- at Baylor: 50.4%
- vs. Oklahoma State: 48.2%
- vs. Arizona: 35.4%
- at Cincinnati: 50.8%
Prediction for Houston vs. TCU
What happens when a stoppable force meets a moveable object?
We’ll certainly find out Friday, as it’s hard to overstate how poor Houston’s offense and TCU’s defense have been.
Houston has been shut out in two straight games and held to 12 or fewer points in four of five games, with only a win against 1-4 Rice keeping the numbers from being historically bad. The Cougars are averaging 10.8 points per game and are 118th in yards per game as well.
The TCU defense has been equally as bad, as the Horned Frogs are 123rd in points per game allowed and 126th in third-down conversion rate allowed. In fairness to TCU, SMU scored two defensive touchdowns, a punt return touchdown, and returned another fumble to the one-yard line to skew a few of those stats, but the Horned Frogs also have an FCS shutout to prop up their defensive numbers.
Either way, when Houston’s offense is on the field, there will be bad football all around.
On the other side though are two units that are succeeding in spite of a lack of complementary football. Houston is 21st in total defense while TCU is 15th in total offense.
Both teams are well-coached. Fritz has often struggled in Year 1 at a new program. He’s more about a “process” than immediate results. Accordingly, he’s going to slow the game down and muck it up a bit so that TCU can’t simply try to score quickly. Fritz is going to try to grind it out and make it ugly.
TCU still has too much offensive talent to be kept completely at bay, but the defense is poor enough that Houston won’t endure a third straight shutout.
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Almost as an aside, this is a game between two of the worst special teams units in college football, as TCU is 122nd in special teams SP+ and Houston is last in the metric. It won’t be pretty at times.
I’m more aligned with the FPM than the oddsmakers here, and I think TCU still wins, but it wont be pretty and it won’t be easy. Expect the Horned Frogs to give the ball away a couple of times, but also expect the TCU defense to look competent against this Houston offense.
TCU wins — but Houston covers.
Prediction: TCU 23, Houston 14
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