Coastal Carolina opened as a 1.5-point favorite over Liberty on Sunday. By Monday, Bookmaker Sportsbook had Liberty -2.5. That is a team going from underdog to favorite in about a day on the road, against a program its head coach ran for four years, and it happened because Liberty beat a 1-2 MAC team by 36 while Coastal lost to Delaware. I think the market got this one backwards, and I am taking the home dog.
Liberty (2-1) visits Coastal Carolina (1-2) on Thursday, September 24, at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. It is the only FBS game on the board that night. Brooks Stadium is doing a Teal Out. Jamey Chadwell, who went 31-5 in Conway and left for Liberty after the 2022 season with most of his staff in tow, is coming back for the first time.
The number
The most recent odds I have is Bookmaker: Liberty -2.5 (-112), Coastal Carolina +2.5 (-108), moneyline Liberty -142 and Coastal +120, total 52.5 with the over -105 and under -115. Sunday’s comparison boards had Coastal -1.5 and 54.5. Those come from different sources, so I am not going to call it a four-point move at one book, but the direction is not in dispute. The visitor is now favored and the total has come down.
At Liberty -2.5 and 52.5, the implied score is Liberty 27.5, Coastal 25. This is a field-goal game in the market’s eyes, and 2.5 versus 3.5 is the whole difference between a Liberty field-goal win cashing or losing. If you see Liberty -3 or worse, the Coastal side gets better. If you see Coastal +1.5 still hanging somewhere, that is the stale number and it is worth less.
What Liberty has actually done
Three games, three different teams. Liberty lost 20-13 at James Madison in Billy Napier’s debut while outgaining the Dukes 321-291, holding the ball for 37 minutes and running 38 times for 91 yards. Twelve penalties for 82 yards and a fourth-and-2 incompletion near midfield ended it. Then the Flames trailed winless FCS Gardner-Webb 23-17 entering the fourth quarter as a 29.5-point favorite. Deshawn Purdie went 6-of-17 and took four sacks, Chadwell benched him, and West Virginia transfer Jaylen Henderson rolled out and hit Darius Copeland for a 54-yard touchdown with 2:34 left to win 24-23.
Then came Ball State. Purdie went 13-of-20 for 211 and three scores, Liberty scored on six of its first seven drives, put up 460 yards with 212 on the ground, and won 51-15. Makai Jackson caught four for 88 and a touchdown, his third straight game with one. All four quarterbacks played, which is a blowout rotation, not a controversy.
Purdie’s season: 36-of-64 for 563 yards, five touchdowns, no interceptions, 56.3 percent. Henderson: 5-of-8 for 101 and two scores. Jackson leads with 230 receiving yards. Kam Davis leads the rushers with 144. The defense has been the constant, holding JMU under 300 and Ball State to 261 and allowing 4.9 yards per play on the year.
Here is the thing about the Ball State game. It was one week after Gardner-Webb. The market is pricing Liberty off its best performance, in Lynchburg, against a team that is 1-2 and took 107 penalty yards. The JMU game and the Gardner-Webb game are the same team. I do not know which version shows up on the road on a short week, and neither does the market, which is why it opened Coastal.
What Coastal has actually done
Coastal lost 31-24 at West Virginia after trailing 24-0 at halftime. Deuce Bailey, a redshirt freshman who followed Ryan Beard from Missouri State, threw for 373 yards and three touchdowns in his second career start, all three scores after the break, including a 12-play, 99-yard drive. Coastal got within a score with under a minute left. Then it beat Fordham 45-7, Beard’s first win, with Bailey throwing three more touchdowns and Nico Cavanillas Alti hitting a school-record 56-yard field goal.
Then Delaware, and this is the game the market punished. Coastal led 14-7 in the second quarter, gained 385 yards, held the Blue Hens to 93 rushing yards at 3.0 a carry, and lost 22-14. It fumbled four times and lost two. A 36-yard Dominic Lee-Knicely touchdown run came back on holding. A personal foul on a PAT gave Delaware a two-point try that made it 15-14 at half. A muffed punt at the Coastal 36 with 8:27 left set up the clinching score on the next play. Coastal then drove to the Delaware 13 and turned it over on downs. Zero points in the second half. Beard’s words afterward: “You have to play winning football on the road, and that was not winning football.”
Bailey’s season: 49-of-88 for 826 yards, eight touchdowns, zero interceptions, 55.7 percent. He is not efficient. He is explosive, with 62-yard, 65-yard, 34-yard and 37-yard touchdowns already, and he has not thrown a pick in 88 attempts. Coastal averages 6.5 yards per play to Liberty’s 5.9 and throws for 277 a game to Liberty’s 221.
The honest caveat is the run game. Coastal ran for 251 against Fordham and 52 and 135 against West Virginia and Delaware, so call it 93.5 a game against FBS teams. Right guard Gavin McLaughlin was carted off in the fourth quarter at Delaware on a line that started the year with zero returning starters. If he is out, that number does not get better.
The three-game numbers, with the asterisk
Liberty scores 29.3 and allows 19.3. Coastal scores 27.7 and allows 20.0. Liberty allows 285 yards a game and 4.9 per play; Coastal allows 341 and 5.3. Liberty converts 46 percent on third down and holds opponents to 30 percent; Coastal is 40 and 39. Liberty holds the ball 32:48 a game to Coastal’s 28:17. Both are +1 in turnover margin. Liberty averages 68 penalty yards a game, Coastal 47.
Each side has one FCS game inflating everything. Liberty’s defensive averages come partly from a Gardner-Webb team that still scored 23 on them. Coastal’s offensive averages come partly from Fordham. Strip those out and you have two teams that each lost a close road game to a better opponent and each got outplayed in stretches by an FCS-level team. That is a pick, not a road favorite.
The matchups that decide it
Bailey against Liberty’s secondary is the one. Liberty allows 132 passing yards a game, which is the best number on either side of this sheet, but the opponents were JMU, Gardner-Webb and a Ball State team that threw for 93. Bailey went for 373 on a Big 12 defense. Liberty’s pass rush was 120th in the country last year with 16 sacks and there is no evidence yet that it has become a different unit. If Coastal protects, Coppock, Hinton and Goldie Lawrence are going to get one-on-one shots down the field, and that is how this offense scores.
Liberty’s run game against Coastal’s front is the other. Coastal’s run defense was the flagged weakness coming in and it has allowed 163 a game. Liberty ran for 2.4 a carry at JMU, then 193 and 212 against Gardner-Webb and Ball State. If Davis and Peyton Jones get 4.5 a carry, Liberty controls the clock and Purdie only has to be adequate. If the JMU version shows up, Purdie has to win it, and his last road start was a 20-13 loss.
Then the stuff that swings a 2.5-point game. Coastal’s special teams cost it the Delaware game. Liberty’s penalties cost it the JMU game. Cavanillas Alti has a 56-yarder on his resume, which matters when the number is a field goal. Chadwell has a 2020 Cure Bowl on his resume in which his Coastal team lost to Liberty on a blocked kick, so he knows how these end.
Chadwell, and what it is worth
Chadwell knows the building. He does not know the roster. Beard has 56 new players and a Missouri State staff, so the “he knows their personnel” angle is mostly gone. What is left is the emotional part: a home crowd that watched him leave, a Teal Out, a national TV window with nothing else on, and a first-year coach who badly needs a signature win after the Delaware loss. That is worth something to the home team. It is not worth a lot, but in a game priced at 2.5 it does not have to be.
Both teams played Saturday, so the short week is a wash. Coastal is home after two of three on the road. Liberty travels to Conway for the first time since 2016.
Injuries
Neither school had posted an availability report as of Monday. Covers listed Liberty TE B. Burklow and RB C. Wood as out and RB J. Marshall as questionable for the Ball State game; treat those as last week’s notes, not Thursday’s. McLaughlin’s leg is the one that matters for Coastal, and the offensive line is the unit to check on both sides Wednesday.
The pick
Coastal Carolina +2.5 (-108), and I like the moneyline at +120 as a second play.
I am not betting on Coastal being the better team. I am betting on the market having overreacted to a 51-15 score against Ball State and a 22-14 loss to Delaware that Coastal outgained and gave away. Bailey has already done to a Big 12 defense what the Liberty pass rush is not built to prevent. Liberty’s own three games say this offense is one bad Purdie quarter from needing a fourth-quarter rescue, and it is now doing it on the road, on ESPN, in a stadium that has a reason to be loud. The number was Coastal -1.5 two days ago. Nothing that happened on Saturday justified moving it four points the other way.
What beats me: Coastal fumbles twice again, Liberty’s run game looks like the Ball State version instead of the JMU version, and the Flames sit on it for 33 minutes and win by six. That is a real outcome. Beard’s team has earned the skepticism about its ball security. At +2.5 and plus money, I will take that risk.
On the total I am passing at 52.5. Coastal’s FBS games have gone 55 and 36, Liberty’s have gone 33 and 66, and I have no read on which pair of offenses shows up. Weather is a non-factor, roughly 75 degrees and calm as of the last snapshot, so it will not decide it for you either. If you need a play, Bailey over his passing yardage number is the better expression of the same idea, because it cashes whether or not Coastal holds onto the football.
Prediction: Coastal Carolina 27, Liberty 24.
Best bet: Coastal Carolina +2.5 (-108). Alternate: Coastal Carolina moneyline (+120).