From Nov. 7: Week 9 – Saturday Night Special

Tomorrow, the Ravens play the Colts in Indianapolis and are favored to win by 1 point. We looked at both teams and wondered why is the line -1 for The Ravens?

The Colts, with a season record of 5 – 2, are the hot team. They’ve won their last 2 games and are playing well. We watched the Colts play in Week 1 and lose to the Jags. We also watched them play against the Browns and last week against Detroit. In looking at their season so far, they have lost to the Jaguars and the Bears and they’ve beaten Minnesota, the Jets, Browns, Bengals and Lions. The combined record of these 7 teams are 18 – 34. All in all, none of them are the best teams in the NFL.

We then looked at the Ravens’ season so far, which is also currently 5 – 2. They have played some tough teams and looked hungry for a win earlier in the season. They have beaten the Browns, Texans, Washington, Bengals and the Eagles. The Cleveland, Washington and Philadelphia game were especially hard hitting games. To be honest, they are all hard hitting games, but the Ravens play a hard hitting smash month game on the ground. They only lost in Week 3 to KC and then last week to Pittsburgh. The combined record for the 7 teams they played against is 27 – 24. Notice the difference?

Last week was also when Lamar had his worst game. He was responsible for 2 interceptions and 2 lost fumbles. The Ravens lost by 4, but if you take away human error, it could have gone the other way.

The Ravens have Dez Bryant playing and he could turn out to be the surprise of the game. Despite last week, we like Lamar Jackson over Philip Rivers at QB. Philip Rivers is in the group of Andy Dalton, Carson Palmer, and Tyrod Taylor. They all play or have played QB for years, but never win the big games. The Colts wide receivers Ashton Dulin and T. Y. Hilton are both out and we like the match up here.

Moving on to the 4:25 time slot, we also like Pittsburgh to win in Dallas, but the line of 14 ½ is a bit too high for us right now. Dallas is horrible but we will wait to see if Ezekiel is playing. He is banged up and is a game day decision right now.

The Cowboys have their 4th QB of the season starting this Sunday: Garrett Gilbert. He has been on the practice team of the Rams, Pats, Oakland, Cardinals, and Browns since 2014 as well as a starter for the Orlando Apollos(!!!) in 2018. With this resume it might be a great play if you get the line at 14 or less.

Pittsburgh is in the Top 5 Defenses for the 2020 season and has only given up 142 points this year. The number 1 team in points allowed are the Dolphins at 130.