A big late-season test is here for both No. 6 Notre Dame and No. 19 Army on Saturday as both look to impress the selection committee. Let’s check out the latest prediction for the game from an expert analytical football model that projects points and picks winners.

Still right in the College Football Playoff picture, Notre Dame is hoping it can put together another strong performance against an undefeated service academy after dominating Navy a few weeks ago.

Army has clinched a spot in the AAC Championship Game and is looking to take what would be a big step forward in the eyes of the selection committee and potentially dash ND’s playoff hopes with a late-season upset.

What do the analytical models suggest will happen when the Fighting Irish and the Black Knights square off this weekend?

For that, let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Notre Dame and Army compare in this Week 13 college football matchup.

As expected, the models favor the Fighting Irish over the Black Knights, but by a margin some may find surprising.

SP+ predicts Notre Dame to defeat Army by a projected score of 32 to 18 and to win the game by an expected margin of 14.4 points in the process.

The model gives the Fighting Irish a strong 82 percent chance of outright victory in the game.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most durable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is this season? So far, the SP+ model is 315-293-8 against the spread with a 51.8 winning percentage after going 23-30 (43.4%) last weekend.

Notre Dame is a 14.5-point favorite against Army, according to the updated lines posted on FanDuel Sportsbook for the game.

FanDuel lists the total as 44.5 points for the game (Over -110, Under -110).

And that put the money odds for Notre Dame at -720 and for Army at +520 to win outright.

If you use this prediction to bet on the game, you should take…

If you do, you’ll be in the company of a very small minority of players, most of whom expect the Fighting Irish to cover against the Black Knights, according to the spread consensus picks for the game.

Notre Dame is getting 51 percent of the attempts to win the game and cover the big point spread against the service academy.

The other 49 percent of bets project Army will either beat the Irish in an upset, or keep the game under the line in a loss.

Both of these teams rank in the top five nationally when it comes to average scoring margin per game.

Notre Dame has a slight edge, ranked second in the FBS by averaging 26.6 points better than its opponents this year when all points are tallied.

Army ranks 5th in the nation and is 23.6 points better than its competitors on average in 2024.

However, these averages have shifted over the last three games.

Notre Dame has outscored its opponents by 35.7 points in that span, while Army has played closer games and outscored the competition by 15 points in that span.

But these averages approach when considering the respective premises.

Army has been outscored opponents by 24.5 points when they’ve been named the road team, while Notre Dame has averaged 23.7 points outscored opponents when playing at home.

Most other football analytics models also favor the Fighting Irish over the Black Knights this week.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Notre Dame is its heavy favorite in the game, coming out in 87.5 percent of the computer’s latest simulations of the matchup.

That leaves Army as the presumptive winner in the remaining 12.5 percent of sims.

How does that translate to an expected margin of victory in the game?

Notre Dame is projected to be 17.3 points better than Army on the same field in both teams’ current form, according to the model’s latest forecast.

When: Sat 23 November
Where: New York, NY

Time: 7:00 PM Eastern
TV: NBC network

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Game odds are updated regularly and may change.

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