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

Stanford Stadium, Stanford, CA

Stream:ESPN

Stanford +6½ +101 over NC State

10:30 PM EST. Tonight at Stanford Stadium, which is a lovely start time for the home team and a war crime for the visitors. NC State's fourth quarter will start at roughly 1:30 in the morning on their body clocks, and Dave Doeren knows it — his staff had the Wolfpack practicing in the middle of the night in Raleigh, flew them out Wednesday, and ran a practice at game time just to survive the trip, the second-latest kickoff in program history. It gets worse: NC State has lost six straight road games outright and covered none of them. Road favorites laying 6.5 in a body-clock graveyard should be priced with fear, and the market is coming around — this opened Wolfpack -7.5 and has been bet down to -6.5 with money showing up on the Cardinal.

The roster NC State is dragging across the country is held together with tape. Leading rusher Duke Scott (358 yards, four touchdowns) is OUT, his replacement Davion Gause is averaging under four yards a carry lately, and against Wake Forest this ground game produced 15 rushing yards on 24 carries — total. The offensive line is down to two of its five Week 0 starters, with the starting center gone and tackle Kamen Smith questionable again. And the Wolfpack defense gives up 27.7 points a game and ranks 133rd in the country in EPA per pass, which is exactly the wrong profile against Davis Warren (1,630 yards, seven touchdowns, just two interceptions, and a 396-yard, three-score game against Georgia Tech on this field). Micah Ford — 529 rushing yards and all eight of Stanford's rushing touchdowns, fresh off 179 yards and four scores last week — gets to run behind a line that isn't the one missing everybody.

The script helps too. The total is 55.5 because neither defense can stop a nosebleed, and these two are a combined 9-4 to the Over. Stanford is feast or famine, but the feasts all happen at home: all three Cardinal wins featured at least 34 points, including a 34-27 outright win over Georgia Tech as a home underdog. NC State, meanwhile, coughed up 21 third-quarter points in a 38-14 home loss to Wake Forest last time out, and its coach may be coaching for his job. In a Friday-night shootout where the favorite is sleep-deprived, down its best back and protecting its quarterback with spare parts, the home dog needs to trade scores for three quarters and be standing there at the end.

Now the part where we hold our breath, because Stanford's downside is a cliff. Its defense allows 452 yards a game — second-most in the Power Four — owns the lowest havoc rate in the ACC, and in the four losses the Cardinal were outscored by an average of 43 points, including 58-7 at Notre Dame and 57-3 at Wake Forest. Linebacker Matt Rose, second in the ACC in tackles last season, misses his third straight game, starting corner Brandon Nicholson is out, last week's 34-7 win came against FCS Elon, and CJ Bailey (1,507 yards, five straight 240-yard games) is fully capable of hanging 40 on this secondary. If the famine version of Stanford shows up, this gets ugly by halftime. The bet is that the home version does — and at +6.5 against a broken, jet-lagged road favorite, that's the right side of the risk.

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