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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Elliott T. Bowers Stadium, Huntsville, TX

Stream:ESPN2

Sam Houston +117 over New Mexico St.

8:00 PM EST. The market has watched these two offenses lately and it is not impressed. New Mexico State (2-4) rolls into Bowers Stadium tonight (8 PM ET, ESPN2) laying 2.5 as a road favorite, which is a bold costume for a team that is 0-3 away from Las Cruces and just got held to a single field goal in a 22-3 loss to FIU. Sam Houston is 1-5 and nobody is framing the poster, but this is a home game in a rock fight, and in rock fights you take the home team at plus money and let the other guys prove they can win a game in somebody else's building — something the Aggies have not done all season.

The one genuinely elite unit on the field tonight wears Sam Houston orange. The Bearkats allow just 137.8 passing yards per game, fourth-best in the entire country, and Adam Damante is exactly the kind of quarterback that stat eats alive: he went 9-of-22 for 104 yards with a pick against FIU, led an offense that managed 230 total yards, and now has to solve that secondary on the road on a Wednesday night. Flip it around and Landyn Locke, for all his recent misery, opened this season with three straight 300-yard games — 335 and three scores at Troy, 316 against Tulsa, 322 and four touchdowns in the 59-0 Nicholls game — against a New Mexico State pass defense ranked 90th that gives up 222 yards a night. The Bearkats' record is also lying a little: they lost at Troy by three and lost to Tulsa by six at home with first-and-goal at the five to win it in the final minute, four straight incompletions from a 2-0 start at Bowers.

Now the ugly part, because there's plenty: Sam Houston has scored three points in each of its last two games, Locke has been sacked 17 times behind a line that can't protect him or open a hole — 65 rushing yards against Western Kentucky — and a run defense coughing up 200 yards a game is a welcome mat for James Jones. The Aggies have also had since Oct. 7 to rest and prepare, and they're 2-0 against the number as a favorite. None of that is nothing. But none of it changes the shape of this game: a low-total, one-score grinder in Huntsville against a winless-on-the-road favorite starting a quarterback who just threw for 104 yards. At +117 we don't need Sam Houston to be good — we need them to be the last team holding the ball in a 20-17 game. Take the Bearkats to win it outright.

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