Week #9 Subscriber Only Write Ups

Ravens @ Browns

Any game involving the Ravens will inevitably be labeled as “physical,” and this one versus the division rival Browns will be no different, lol. The Browns will seek revenge from a week #2 loss that saw them play okay but lose as a more or less result of two interceptions thrown by Anderson. Anderson and the Browns have been putting it together on offense in recent weeks since getting some players back. They’ve won as 7 point dogs versus the Giants and Jaguars, while narrowly losing a game versus the Redskins in which they were badly outgained. They really struggled offensively versus the best defense of those 3 teams I just mentioned – the Redskins. Here they face a Ravens’ defense with similar, and slightly better, numbers than the Redskins. The one thing they’ll have going for them this game are the numerous injuries to the Baltimore secondary, the same thing that cost Baltimore many a game last year. The Ravens’ pass defense has actually been pretty average after the second week of the season. That coincides with the injury to safety Dawan Landry. It would appear that Jim Leonhard taking his place has been a significant drop in skill at the position. Landry will be back in a week or two. CB McCallister, a 2 time Pro Bowler, has been dealing with injuries and it looks like he may be done for the year. Aging and perpetually gimpy Samari Rolle may be back for this game. If you like watching a cornerback running 2 steps behind the receiver, tune in if Samari sees significant playing time. Any DB guarding a Cleveland WR will be giving up a step, actually.

I better slow down before I talk myself out of the Ravens, lol. I am making a case for the fact that the Browns will be able to score some points in this game, though. No one has had a successful running game versus the Ravens in quite some time (26 consecutive games without giving up a 100 yard rusher, I believe?), so the Browns will need to air it out to win this game, and they are blessed with weapons for just such an attack. The Browns’ vertical passing game will help the Over in this game.


So you can mark the Browns down for about 17 points (minimum) versus a defense that allows 18.8. How will the Ravens’ offense fare? Even better. They have the luxury of having match up advantages in both the running and passing games, offensively. I project the Ravens to do better than league average in both yards per run and yards per pass, though their biggest advantage will be running the ball. As the Browns will have to defend the run first on most non-obvious passing downs, Flacco should find comfortable gaps in the defense to throw the ball to when passing, and play action should be particularly effective. Teams that run the ball well have a big advantage offensively because the quarterbacks will find themselves under less pass-rushing pressure with fewer defenders in the secondary time after time. The Titans didn’t have a great game running the ball versus the Colts last week, as the Colts were committed to stopping the run, but as a result, Kerry Collins found many soft spots to throw to and completed enough passes to keep drives alive and win the ball game. Flacco also has a strong arm and can throw an accurate deep ball, so both of these teams have home run potential on any given play. Just like the Titans knew the Colts were defending the run first and so came out passing the ball more on early downs, so will the Ravens. Offenses have to punish defenses who over-commit to stop either the run or the pass.

Clearly Flacco has had some road woes this year, hurting his team with costly turnovers. It’s a positive sign, though, that he had his best passing game of the season in his last road start at Miami, and followed that up with another good outing last week versus the Raiders. The rookie QB, like Matt Ryan, is showing improvement in his play both at home and on the road.

Putting the pieces together, the Ravens should have a good offensive day due to their now more balanced attack versus a below average Browns’ defense. The Browns will run the ball as long as they’re mildly successful or failing that, just enough to keep the Ravens’ defense honest. Yes, it’s true that Jamal Lewis had a good yards per carry average on only 12 carries versus the Ravens in week #2, but good luck maintaining that average for 20+ carries, as recent history suggest that will be a near impossibility. The Browns may talk run, but they have to know that to beat the Ravens they’ll need to do what the Colts did a few weeks ago and exploit the only advantage they have in this game, their speedy TEs and WRs versus an injured and statistically declining Ravens’ secondary.

Final Score Prediction: Ravens 22 – Browns 17 (with Matt Stover kicking 5 field goals for the Ravens, lol)

The weather forecast as of Friday still looks pretty mild, so any number under 37 is a gift for the Over. Close games like this one rates to be feature teams trying to score all the way until the final possession, and as I like to point out, a 17-17 tie at any point is a winner on any Over below 37 barring a scoreless OT.


Eagles @ Seahawks

After last week’s blowout of the 49ers, the Seahawks are backkkkkkkk…ack…cough…hack…cough. Uttering such a phrase nearly caused me to choke on my own vomit! Last week’s victory was a false win, if ever NFL history has seen one – a completely misleading final score. The Seahawks won by passing for more yards than the 49ers, right? Enh! (incorrect buzzer sound) They threw for 42 yards less, but did have a higher yards per pass average thanks to the 102 yards gained on 2 touchdown passes to fullback Leonard Weaver. Leonard Weaver, you can’t shut him down, you can only hope to contain him. I guess his neon green shoes aren’t just flashy, they’re toxic as well, as Leonard finds himself questionable with a foot injury heading into this week’s game. Not only was Leonard the Seahawks’ leading receiver by a more than 2 to 1 margin, he was almost their leading rusher in the game with 2 carries for 13 yards. No, that is not a misprint. The Seahawks’ leading rusher last week was M. Morris who gained 16 yards on 11 carries. As a team the Seahawks gained 39 yards on 28 attempts for a paltry 1.4 yards per carry. Seattle was outgained by 127 yards in their 21 point victory last week. They had the luck of playing against the Irish O’Sullivan, a turnover machine unlike the NFL has seen in quite some time. O’Sullivan, of course, was benched before even reaching the half by new coach Mike Singletary, who apparently suffered so much stress-induced weight loss during said first half that his trousers slipped right off his torso during his halftime pep chewing out.

The simple truth is that since Matt Hasselbeck was lost to injury, opposing defenses have been defending the run first versus the Seahawks, which is why they’ve averaged 85 rush yards per game in their last 3, versus the 143 per game they had before losing their starting QB. Their first 4 games average was bolstered considerably by the 245 rush yards they gained versus the Pre-Haslett Rams in week #3.

The 49ers have a pretty good run defense, ranked 8th by my rescored numbers, but the Eagles flying into town have been even stronger, ranked 4th. It doesn’t look good for the Seattle ground game. Can still starting Seneca make passing pie out of the crabapple castoffs running routes for him? I don’t see how. Take away the 2 TD tosses to the fullback last week and you’re left with pretty meager pass statistics, and that was versus an average 49er pass defense. The Eagles have the 9th ranked pass defense. The last time the Seahawks faced a top 10 pass defense was in Tampa Bay a couple of weeks ago where Seneca ended up passing for 73 total yards. That was Seneca’s first start of the season actually. In the Seahawks’ last home game 3 weeks ago, Charlie Frye got the start. The result? Also less than 100 yards passing versus the Packers. Call me a cold-hearted skeptic and believer in the bald-faced stats, but I don’t see how on earth the Seahawks are going to manage to put together many scoring drives versus a Philly defense ranked in the top 10 versus both the pass and rush.

So if the Seahawks will be hard pressed to score, can they turn the game into a defensive battle and cover thusly? Their run defense has been okay this year, giving up 122 yards per game and a little less than 4 yards per carry by my rescored stats. The Eagles’ rush attack has been improving in recent weeks, culminating in the 193 yards they picked up versus the Falcons last week. Granted, the Falcons don’t have a good run defense, but the Eagles have played many teams that do. By my numbers the Eagles have faced the 5th toughest schedule of run defenses in the league so far this year. The Eagles have already played against 5 teams with near equal or better run defenses than the Seahawks have.

The Seahawks will also be without their star DE, Patrick Kerney, for the first time this season. He’s their sack leader with 5 this season, one ahead of LB Julian Peterson. With a weakened pass rush, can the Seahawks’ secondary cover well enough to limit the Eagles’ passing game? I’m going to have to go with a big fat NO on this one, as the Seahawks actually have one of the worst pass defenses in the league, ranked 27th, while the Eagles have the 9th ranked pass offense, a ranking achieved for the most part without 2 of their top receivers, Reggie Brown and Kevin Curtis, who will both suit up and be ready for this game. TE LJ Smith will sit this one out due to a concussion – he also missed a couple of games earlier in the season. When one team is projected to do better than league average in both yards per carry and yards per pass, that’s a recipe for defensive failure for the opponent, in this case the Seahawks, as there is very little they can do to shut down any aspect of the Eagles’ offense. About the best they can hope for is that the 60% chance of showers turns into 100% chance of showers and that the 12-17 mph wind turns into a 30-40 mph constant Tsunami wind. Only they don’t have natural grass a la Heinz Field so they still won’t have much hope of turning it into a 3-0 final score in 4 inches of muddy grass chunks.

Final Score Prediction: Eagles 31 – Seahawks 13

Patriots @ Colts

The Bucs continue their western trek by pointing the compass north from Dallas to Kansas City this week. They’re hoping their fortunes are pointing up as well, as an inability to score a single touchdown on 262 offensive yards last week meant they scored in the single digits (9 points) for the first time this season, as well as being only the second time they’ve scored less than 20 this season. They outgained the Cowboys by 90 yards, so it was a particularly stinging loss for a team needing every win possible in the resurgent NFC South this year.

The Chiefs return to Arrowhead after taking the Jets to the wire last week, giving up the game losing score with a minute to play. They had their second best offensive game of the year, accruing 330 yards. Defensively, they were still one of the worst in the league, surrendering 421 yards. How bad has their run defense been? They’ve allowed a whopping 198 yards rushing per game to opponents this year. Not good news when you’re facing the Bucs’ 9th ranked rush attack. The Bucs will not have Warrick Dunn available for this game, as the Bucs are planning on resting the pinched nerve in his back after giving him limited carries last week. Gruden regretted playing him at all last week, he was quoted as saying. That means Earnest Graham will continue to get the bulk of the carries, as well as playing as a blocking full back occasionally, the Bucs are so thin at RB right now. Still, it’s not a huge concern, as running against the Chiefs requires nothing more than any old run of the mill running back holding onto the ball and running downhill through a gaping hole.

Larry Johnson and Spitgate continue to be news in KC. Apparently coach Edwards is so down on LJ right now that he’s going to continue benching him without the league or the law mandating him to do so. The carries, therefore, will continue to be handled by Kolby Smith. 3rd stringer Jamaal Charles is banged up and “?” to go, so the Chiefs clearly have plenty of running back woes of their own. The Chiefs have only gotten more than 102 yards rushing in a game twice this season – 184 versus the Falcons, and 214 versus the Broncos – two teams with sub-par run defenses. The Bucs have the 6th rated run defense, so the Chiefs will be hard pressed to have any success on the ground in this match up.

An interesting development that should affect what we see in this game is the semi-spread offense the Chiefs went with last week. As their offense and season have been so poor, they had nothing to lose by trying something new last week with the mobile Thigpen back at QB. They ran some no-huddle and shotgun rollouts, the kind of offense Thigpen played in college at Coastal Carolina. As they rate to be playing from behind for the entire 2nd half, odds are they’ll do it again this week in an effort to gain ground versus the Bucs, who oddly enough were the 3rd worst team in the league last year when defending 5-wide sets. Still, the Bucs have the 5th ranked pass defense, and Thigpen may not be able to avoid any turnovers two weeks in a row.

The Bucs have not had a particularly explosive passing game this year, ranking 19th. Their best/only deep threat, Joey Galloway, has been hampered by injuries. Still, they’ve got some solid pass-catching tight ends and wide receivers. WR Antonio Bryant is having a career-resurrecting season with a combination of good on the field play and no off the field blunders. The Chiefs defensively are again near the bottom of the pack with the 31st ranked pass defense, with only the Lions being worse than they.

Clearly the Bucs have the advantage in just about every imaginable match up. The Chiefs had one of the strongest punters in the league with Dustin Colquitt, but he’s sidelined with a groin injury right now. They’ve also switched kickers, and just added a new long snapper. If any team in the league is primed to have a blocked or botched punt/field goal attempt this week, it’s the Chiefs. They figure to have a lot more punt attempts than field goal attempts this week, so the Bucs could find themselves with very favorable field position on more than one occasion. This will help the Over. The Chiefs have given up 34 points or more in 3 of their 7 games this season – this will help the Over. The Chiefs will most likely run their variation of the spread with the no-huddle and shotgun for the second week in a row, this will help the Over. As of this writing, there are still 36.5s available on the board, which is on the right side of 37 when betting the Over. The weather will be mostly cloudy with 12-17 mph winds, not poor enough conditions to affect the offenses, really. I recommended the Over 37 earlier in the week for 1 Unit. Now that the Chiefs will be running an offense more conducive to the Over (and Bucs starting SS Phillips is out with a broken arm), there is even more value on the Over. I’d recommend taking an additional half Unit on the Over 36.5.

Final Score Prediction: Bucs 31 – Chiefs 13