Georgia-Auburn line moves in big way since May opening
The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry is here, and Georgia comes in as a big favorite over Auburn. However, the Bulldogs haven’t proven to be the best at covering the spread so far this season. Several of the biggest sports books in Vegas released their lines for Saturday’s matchup with the Vegas Insider Consensus line coming in at 29 in favor of Georgia at the time of publication.
Betrivers and DraftKings give us an especially interesting look at the gambling side of this game, showing how things have swayed greatly since the season started. Betrivers started the line at UGA -13.5 in May, had it move to 15-points pretty quickly and posted a 27.5-point Georgia advantage on Sunday. About three hours later, the Bulldogs had picked up another 1.5 points as 29-point favorites.
As for DraftKings, the initial line wasn’t quite as low but the trend was the same. They had the Bulldogs as 21.5-point favorites before opening UGA at -28 on Sunday and seeing the number jump to 29.5 by day’s end.
Auburn is coming into Athens 3-2 on the season and having lost its last game Saturday night to LSU. The Tigers also fell earlier this season to Penn State with both losses at home. Saturday’s contest at Sanford Stadium will actually be their first road game of the 2022 campaign.
Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin faced scrutiny in the offseason and is certainly on the hot seat with the slow start. Things don’t get easier either with a road trip to No. 9 Ole Miss a week after Georgia as well as two other ranked opponents (Mississippi State and Alabama) still on the schedule. Arkansas and Texas A&M, Auburn’s two other Power Five opponents, fell out of the AP Poll this week while the Razorbacks remain ranked in the Coaches Poll.
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As for Georgia, the Bulldogs dropped one spot in both polls on Sunday. They had been ranked No. 1, but Saturday night’s narrow 26-22 win over Missouri did nothing to inspire confidence in voters. As a result, Alabama jumped back into the top spot.
“Composure and resiliency, man,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said of his team after the win over Missouri. “They believe in it. They believe in each other. They never doubted. But that doesn’t solve the problem that we’ve got to get better. I mean, you sit around a hotel all day and you wait to go to play a game, and everybody in the world thinks you’re going to go out there and blow some team out. I’ve been in this league too long, man. I know different. I know these environments you’re walking into, and you know what? It’s going to be really hard next week, too. And it’s going to be really hard the next week. And it’s going to be really hard two weeks after that. It just doesn’t change. You guys may think it’s going to be easy at some point, but I promise you, it’s going to be really hard in the SEC every week.”
Kickoff time for Saturday’s contest is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS as the first game of an SEC doubleheader. Alabama and Texas A&M make up the nightcap.
