Baltimore’s defense carried them in a 13-7 victory over Buffalo last week. Cleveland’s offense never got started in a 29-10 blowout loss at Philadelphia on Sunday.
The Ravens struggled to run the ball last week as they gained only 83 yards on 28 carries. RBs Justin Forsett and Terrance West split the carries but Forsett was much better (4.1 ypc). Expect him to see a bigger workload this week against a defense that ranked 30th vs. the run in 2015 and yielded 133 yards last week on the ground. QB Joe Flacco was very efficient against Buffalo as he threw for 258 yards and hit seven different receivers with 10+ yard gains. That’s spreading it around and the Browns secondary allowed 270 yards through the air to a rookie (Carson Wentz) who barely played in the preseason. I expect OC Marc Trestman to mix it up on offense as Cleveland just doesn’t have the horses to consistently stop opposing running or passing games.
The Browns will turn the QB duties over to Josh McCown for the foreseeable future as QB Robert Griffin III is out for at least eight weeks with a broken bone in his left shoulder. McCown had a decent 12-4 TD/INT ratio last season but the team is 2-17 SU over the past two seasons in games in which he starts. He’ll be throwing to an untested group of receivers as rookie WR Corey Coleman and WR (former QB) Terrelle Pryor were the top receivers in Week 1. TE Gary Barnidge didn’t record a catch. The Ravens held the Bills to 111 yards passing last week and shouldn’t have much trouble with this group. Cleveland’s rushing numbers were good last week (21-120) but I don’t expect them to consistently move the ball on the ground against the physical front seven of Baltimore (65 rushing yards on 24 carries last week by the Bills.
- The Ravens are 5-2 against the spread in their last 7 games.
- Baltimore is 1-4 straight up in their last 5 road games.
- The game total has gone Under in 4 of Baltimore’s last 6 games.
- Cleveland is 1-5-1 against the spread in their last 7 home games.
- The Browns are 2-14 straight up in their last 16 meetings with the Ravens.