No. 6 Penn St. Nittany Lions (12-2; 8-2 Big Ten) vs. No. 3 Boise St. Broncos (12-1; 7-0 Mountain West)

7:30 p.m. ET, December 31, 2024 – ESPN

State Farm Stadium (Capacity: 63,400 / Glendale, AZ)

Note:

All rankings above come directly from the NCAA (as of 12/14/24), with the exception of strength of schedule, which is taken from the Power Rankings.

The Redzone TD% and Redzone TD% Defense are calculated by me and are not evaluated by the NCAA. Determining who has the advantage in these categories is purely arbitrary.

Short thoughts:

That’s, uh… more chipmunks than I thought. I knew Boise State’s offense ran almost entirely through Ashton Jeanty, and these numbers really show that.

There are also a few statistics that I’ve continued to include here for consistency, although they are skewed since PSU has played the most games of any school in the FBS (such as number of first downs and number of interceptions). – In the former, the PSU defense is artificially low while the offense is artificially high, and this is reversed for interceptions. However, I will never say that a three-INT day against a top ten team isn’t a performance worthy of skewing the numbers in their favor!

A few more bullet points after the numbers:

• Both teams had 60 red zone trips for their offense; The PSU defense has allowed just 34 trips inside the RedZone in 14 games (2.43 trips per game), while the BSU defense has allowed 42 (3.23 trips/game).
• Penn State has converted 81 of its 170 third-down attempts, while Boise State has converted 83 of 168
• Nittany Lions opponents have converted 62 of their 185 third-down attempts, while Bronco opponents have converted 74 of 194 attempts.
• In its 14 games, PSU has attempted 23 fourth-down conversions and converted 16 of them; The BSU made 21 attempts and converted 15.
• Penn State’s opponents converted 15 of their 25 fourth down attempts, while Boise State’s opponents converted 19 of their 38 attempts.
• The Nittany Lions have allowed a total of 8 punt returns all season; The Broncos have allowed 12. On the other hand, PSU returned 22 punts while BSU returned 24 punts.
• Boise made 45 punts all season (about 3.5 punts per game), compared to Penn State’s 42 punts all season (3 punts per game).
• The Broncos returned 20 kickoffs and allowed 40 kickoff returns against them; The Nittany Lions returned 17 kickoffs and allowed just 24.

What do you all say?