Ohio State vs. Washington score prediction by expert football model

What an expert model projects as No. 1 Ohio State goes on the road against Washington in college football’s Week 5 action on Saturday.

Ohio State is the near-consensus No. 1 team in college football as we near the end of the first month of the season, and is coming off an idle weekend as quarterback Julian Sayin embarks on his first road career start.

Washington not only isn’t ranked, but didn’t receive a single vote from AP pollsters this week despite being undefeated and playing some of the sport’s most potent offense from a lightning-fast trio of skill players so far.

What do the analytics suggest will happen as the Huskies welcome the Buckeyes in this Big Ten clash?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Ohio State and Washington compare in this Week 5 college football game.

Ohio State vs. Washington score prediction

As might be expected, the models are siding with the Buckeyes in this road test, but are projecting a pretty close game in the end.

SP+ predicts that Ohio State will defeat Washington by a projected score of 31 to 21 and to win the game by an expected margin of 10.2 points in the process.

The model gives the Buckeyes a strong 74 percent chance to win the game outright.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ college football prediction model is 94-101 against the spread with a 48.2 win percentage.

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How to pick the game

The bookies are calling the Buckeyes a single-digit favorite over the Huskies.

Ohio State is an 8.5 point favorite against Washington, according to the latest updated game lines posted to FanDuel Sportsbook entering this weekend.

FanDuel lists the total at 52.5 points for the matchup.

And it set the moneyline odds for Ohio State at -315 and for Washington at +250 to win outright.

If you’re using this projection to bet on the game, you should take...

• Ohio State -8.5
• Buckeyes to win -315
• Bet under 52.5 points

The game’s implied score suggests a close victory for the Buckeyes.

When taking the point spread and total into consideration, it’s implied that Ohio State will defeat Washington by a projected score of 31 to 22.

That’s what a majority of bettors are thinking when looking over the latest spread consensus picks for the game.

Ohio State is getting 61 percent of bets to win the game by at least 9 points and cover the point spread to stay undefeated.

The other 39 percent of wagers project Washington will either defeat the Buckeyes outright in an upset, or keep the final margin under 9 points in a loss.

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Computer predictions

Most other football analytical models also favor the Buckeyes to handle the Huskies in this important Big Ten road test.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Ohio State came out ahead of the Huskies in a majority 68.8 percent of the computer’s most recent simulations of the game.

That leaves Washington as the presumptive winner in the remaining 31.2 percent of sims.

But while the Buckeyes emerged as the outright winner in most of the simulations, the models are forecasting a closer game than they might prefer.

Ohio State is projected to finish 4.8 points better than Washington on the same field in both teams’ current form, according to the model’s 20,000 simulations.

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How good is that model?

How accurate was the College Football Power Index computer prediction model last Saturday?

Projecting the games a week ago, the Power Index models correctly predicted 72.3 percent of all games and hit 52.3 percent against the spread.

Predicting a total of 799 college football games a year ago, the Power Index computers were correct for 70.964 percent of their final picks, ranking eighth nationally out of 55 other football models.

Over the last decade, the Football Power Index has proven correct on 75 percent of FBS college football game predictions, including in 73 percent of matchups when it favored a team with at least 70 percent likelihood to win.

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How to watch Ohio State vs. Washington

When: Sat., Sept. 27
Where: Washington

Time: 3:30 p.m. Eastern
TV: CBS network

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