Monday Night Preview – Baltimore at Cleveland

If Baltimore (4-4) wasn’t feeling a sense of urgency heading into their Monday nighter vs. the dreadful Browns (1-7), they are now!

The surging Cincinnati Bengals moved to 5-0 straight-up in divisional games Sunday with an 18-12 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not normally known as fans of the Steel Curtain, there was probably more than a few Raven players glued to the set for that Bengal win, asking what everyone else is wondering: How did Cinci get so good, so fast?

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With their focus now turned 100-percent on Monday Night Football, the person who should perhaps be feeling the most anxiety is Brown quarterback Brady Quinn. Benched during his awful Week 3 performance against this very Baltimore team, Quinn is back under center Monday for his second round of the season as starter.

Quinn’s numbers from the first three weeks, nor the stats Derek Anderson produced in his five-week post at No. 1 pivot, will not be hard to top. After all, Anderson (36.2) has the lowest QB rating in the league. Unfortunately the offense has thinned at talent, the defense is losing hope and until someone can make sense of the coaching and management fiasco at Brownsville, it looks like another limp to the finish is in store.

Baltimore looked great in its Week 8 home game vs. the then unbeaten Denver Broncos, treating bettors to a 30-7 win. Betting on the Ravens has been a losing proposition since Week 4, though, as the team is just 2-3 ATS in their past five outings.

Online sportsbooks opened the line for the Ravens-Browns game just a shade higher than 10 and the contest attracted very little attention through the past week. Cleveland is rested off a bye week but divisional home teams off a bye are just 2-12 ATS when playing under the Monday night lights. It has added up to an increase of betting on the road favorite that began late Sunday and will likely continue up until kickoff.

Ravens running back Ray Rice has been a big part of any success on offense this season and will be featured as a major part of the attack Monday. Leading all backs in receptions this year; Rice is second in net yards from scrimmage with 126.1 per game. He has also scored four rushing TDs in the past three games so against Cleveland’s 31st ranked run defense, Rice should flourish.

In the first meeting this season the Ravens throttled the Browns 34-3 and in eight games this year Baltimore has broken the 30-point barrier five times. It has been 15 games since Cleveland achieved such a lofty point total.

This is the first Monday Night game of the season for each of these teams and neither has played a single game under the lights since last year. The Browns were 2-1 ATS on Monday in 2008 while the Ravens went 1-0 ATS, losing straight-up vs. Pittsburgh in Week 4. Given the circumstances, Baltimore looks to have an upper hand in the motivation department and it now comes down to execution.

The line is currently -11 with the betting action heavily favouring the Ravens, with close to 80% of the volume on the big favourite.

Enjoy the game

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