Predicting BYU Football at Wyoming

On Saturday night, Kalani Sitake and the BYU football program renew and old conference matchup against the Wyoming Cowboys. The Cougars are looking to remain undefeated, while the Cowboys are looking for their first win of the season following an 0-2 start. Today, we’re predicting BYU’s final non-conference game of the 2024 season at Wyoming.

The Cowboys have not been good in the first two weeks. In fact, they have been downright dreadful. Wyoming ranks in the bottom 25 of the country in the following metrics:

The Cougars are favored by double digits in this game and they should be. BYU’s offense hasn’t been perfect, farm from it, but the defense has been excellent. If BYU takes care of the football, they should win this game by multiple scores.

After dominating Southern Illinois, BYU’s offense took a step back against SMU, turning the ball over three times and putting up only 18 points. The game against Wyoming will give the BYU offense an opportunity to get back to moving the football and scoring points. BYU and quarterback Jake Retzlaff need to show well. They need to get into a rhythm heading into conference play next week. Retzlaff will get the start against the Cowboys, but it’s unclear how long his leash will be if he struggles with turnovers once again. Last week, BYU’s coaching staff never considered a quarterback change.

The BYU defense has been fantastic and carried the Cougars to a win over the Mustangs. BYU is one of only two defenses to hold a P4 team to no touchdowns in a game this season. The other team is Georgia.

Wyoming fans hate BYU to their core, so the environment will get rowdy. Still, BYU will have too much talent for the home-field advantage to overcome.

As of this writing, BYU is favored by 9.5 points and the over/under is set at 40.5. In other words, oddsmakers expect BYU to win with a final score around 25-15. Vegas doesn’t have a great feel for BYU through two games this season. BYU was a 14-point favorite over Southern Illinois. Here at BYU On SI, we predicted a 28-point win and the Cougars won by 28. BYU was a 12-point underdog against SMU. We predicted a BYU win by 4 points. The Cougars ended up winning by 3.

The predictive models for BYU are still baking in a portion of 2023 results, but BYU is a better team in 2024 than they were in 2023. We like BYU’s chances more than oddsmakers at this point.

BYU is going to beat the spread once again.

We expect a bounce- back performance from Jake Retzlaff after turning the ball over three times against SMU last week. Wyoming has zero takeaways so far this season.

The BYU defense should suffocate a Wyoming offense that hasn’t been able to get anything going this season.

BYU 34 | Wyoming 10