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

Brooks Stadium (SC), Conway, SC

Stream: ESPN

Coastal Carolina +115 over Liberty

7:10 PM EST. We don't need the points here. Give us the Chanticleers outright at +115.There are games where the handicap becomes unnecessarily complicated because everyone wants to prove how much they know. They'll break down third-down conversion rates, yards per play, defensive success rates, weather, coaching history and 15 other statistics until they've convinced themselves they can predict what 20-year-old kids are going to do with an oblong football. We're not interested in doing that here. At essentially pick'em, we're simply looking for which team we'd rather own at plus money, and that's Coastal Carolina.

The most interesting player on the field is Coastal quarterback Deuce Bailey. The redshirt freshman has thrown for 812 yards with eight touchdowns and zero interceptions while adding another 147 yards on the ground. That's 959 yards of offense in three games from one kid. Coastal is only 1-2, but that record doesn't tell the story particularly well. The Chanticleers lost to West Virginia by seven and Delaware by eight, and they've hurt themselves with turnovers and special-teams mistakes at some terrible times. Clean up even a couple of those self-inflicted wounds and we're probably discussing this team differently.

Meanwhile, we're not ready to suddenly fall in love with Liberty because the Flames just hung 51 on Ball State. The week before that, Liberty needed a 54-yard touchdown pass with 2:34 remaining to escape FCS Gardner-Webb. Starting quarterback Deshawn Purdie struggled badly enough in that game to get pulled after completing 6-of-17 passes. He looked considerably better against Ball State, but beating the hell out of Ball State doesn't erase what we saw previously. Liberty has shown three very different versions of itself through three games, which makes laying road chalk with the Flames rather unappealing.

The Jamey Chadwell storyline will get plenty of attention because he's returning to the place where he had tremendous success. That's a great television narrative. We're just not sure what it's worth when the ball is kicked off. Chadwell isn't bringing those Coastal teams from several years ago with him. He's bringing the 2026 Liberty Flames, a team we're still trying to figure out.

Coastal is young, imperfect and capable of doing some incredibly stupid things. We know that going in. But we're getting the game at home, we're getting plus money, and we're getting a quarterback who has yet to throw an interception while accounting for nearly 1,000 yards of offense in three games. In a matchup the market essentially views as a toss-up, that's enough for us.

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