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

Acrisure Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA .

Streaming:ESPN

Syracuse +10½ -110 over Pittsburgh

7:30 PM EST. There are certain favorites we're willing to spot double digits with, but Pittsburgh isn't one of them. The Panthers are coming off a 12-7 victory over UCF in which they generated just 315 yards and 4.4 yards per play. Weather certainly contributed to the ugliness, but Pitt went 5-for-18 on third down and didn't score a single point in the second half. Now we're being asked to lay 10½ points with them four days later. No thanks. Frankly, we'd be a lot more interested in laying 10½ with Pittsburgh if the game were already over.

Syracuse also comes in at 1-1, but its 21-18 loss to Cal was far more encouraging than the final score suggests. The Orange moved the football, produced over 500 yards of offense and outgained Cal by nearly 200 yards. Steve Angeli threw for more than 300 yards and Syracuse had three receivers finish with at least 70 receiving yards. The problem wasn't an inability to move the chains. The problem was self-destruction. Three interceptions and 15 penalties for 132 yards will get you beat against almost anybody. Those are costly mistakes, but they're also correctable mistakes. We'd much rather back a double-digit underdog that demonstrated an ability to move the football and sabotaged itself than one that simply couldn't generate offense.

Angeli is particularly important to this handicap. Syracuse was a completely different operation without him, and while he was far from perfect against Cal, the offense at least looked functional again. His three interceptions were damaging, but he was also willing and able to push the ball downfield. He's still working his way back after missing most of last season, so expecting some rust was reasonable. If Angeli simply cleans up a couple of those mistakes, Syracuse has enough offense to make Pitt work for every bit of this inflated number.

Meanwhile, what exactly has Pittsburgh done to warrant this much respect? The Panthers destroyed Miami of Ohio in their opener and then came crashing back to earth against UCF. That's two completely different performances against two completely different levels of competition, which leaves us with a Pitt team that is still largely being priced on projection rather than anything definitive we've seen on the field. We don't need to determine which version of Pittsburgh is the real one. At +10½, the burden isn't on Syracuse to win the game. It's on Pitt to separate, and we're not convinced this offense can consistently create the margin required to do that.

This is ultimately a number play. Two games into a season is far too early to be treating either of these teams as a finished product, yet we're getting more than a touchdown plus a field goal with an Orange team that just accumulated more than 500 yards against a Power Four opponent. Syracuse can lose this game and still cash our ticket, and with an offense capable of moving the football through the air, there's also plenty of backdoor potential should Pitt create some separation. Pittsburgh may very well be the better team, but being better and being 11 points better are two entirely different propositions.

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