Louisiana Tech (5-2, 3-1) will travel Florida Atlantic (3-4, 1-2) for a Conference USA tilt Friday night at 5:30 PM CT. The game will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network.
Let's take a look at the individual matchups according to Pro Football Focus. Keep in mind that a score >70 is considered starter level, where anything above 84 is considered to be elite.
This game could very well come down to which quarterback plays the best on Friday night. J'Mar Smith is up and down week after week, but Chris Robison has had his share of struggles for the Owls as well.
Speaking about his signal calling during Tuesday's press conference, Skip Holtz said, "With J'Mar (Smith), I think having his headiness and his experience has been a really positive addition for us offensively. He is not playing perfect. He missed a couple open receivers and missed a couple deep balls that could have resulted in points that could have maybe taken the game out of reach a little bit earlier. But the decision he made on fourth down the confidence that he had to see what the defense was doing and how they were overplaying an unbalanced formation to make that decision on his own to pull the ball on fourth down. It was just a heady, heads up, confident, mature play. That comes from experience."
After turning it over five times in a loss to Marshall, Lane Kiffin said about his quarterback, "That's why in the evaluation you obviously look at his stat line. You have four picks in the game and really only one is a bad pick. His play was not as poor as his stat line in that area."
Both quarterbacks will look to bounce back this week.
Devin Singletary is special for the Owls. Singletary had 33 touchdowns a season ago and has 14 to this point in 2018, but he has yet to really get loose behind a struggling offensive line.
Jaqwis Dancy is performing extremely well when healthy this season. Dancy will need to have a big week on the ground against a FAU defense that is allowing nearly 200 yards per game on the ground in 2018.
Bobby Holly continues to see his snaps increase week after week with solid play in his H-back role. Teddy Veal also appears to be fully recovered from offseason foot surgery and has 18 catches for 178 yards in the last two weeks.
After collecting 20 interceptions in 2017, the FAU defense has really struggled in 2018 with only five interceptions. Jalen Young had seven interceptions in 2017, good for second nationally, but has zero this year from his safety spot. Young is questionable for Friday night's matchup.
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