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Late in the season, the NFL scheduling office flexes marquee games to the Saturday slates to increase viewership and attention.
So it raises even more eyebrows when a team is favored by 20 points.
Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry and the Ravens host the Browns with playoff implications.
Baltimore must win to clinch the AFC North title and lock up the AFC’s No. 3 seed.
Thus, the Ravens will play their starters in the regular-season finale, while Cleveland is opting for its fourth different starting quarterback this year.
Bailey Zappe starting over Dorian Thompson-Robinson actually matters to me.
All week I was ready to back Baltimore in large fashion.
DTR is arguably the worst quarterback I have ever seen start a regular-season game, and that has proved true this year with six interceptions in six games without a single touchdown pass.
Though he has yet to play a single snap this season and only joined the team in October, Zappe has looked competent in previous seasons. I am not expecting much, but when a point spread of this historical magnitude is involved, one must split hairs.
“We did take a bet from a guy we respect on the Ravens -17.5 on Wednesday,” Las Vegas SuperBook VP and oddsmaker John Murray told Only Players, alluding to the point spread moving in one direction to the current number of 20. “We moved the line to 18.5, and from there, we just keep moving with the market.”
Week 18 is inevitably tricky. Teams already eliminated from playoff contention often play backups, and games sometimes unfold like preseason NFL games or meaningless college bowl games.
“What you do is you move the number up until you finally see some resistance. For now, we don’t see any resistance, so we keep moving it up,” Murray said. “Until we see a bet from a respected account, then we don’t think we’ve gone too high.”
When a game’s point spread is near three touchdowns, that allows garbage time to have too much impact on the outcome.
After all, at some point in the fourth quarter, Baltimore figures to have secured the win and likely will have shifted its focus to next weekend’s playoffs.
Betting on the NFL?
Nevertheless, I am quite confident the Ravens are the dominant side the entire first half and thus feel there is line value with backing Baltimore -11.5 in the first half.
That is what I am betting in this game.
Why Trust New York Post Betting
Doug Kezirian is a New York Post contributor who currently serves as the Chief Content Officer for Only Players, a sports betting media company. Doug has over two decades of experience in the betting space, including spending 11 years at ESPN as a host, columnist and betting analyst. He’s also the rare personality who has documented success — 14th place in 2023 Circa Million and Las Vegas SuperContest ($37K), two top-10 finishes in 2022 William Hill College Football Challenge ($58K) and also grabbed headlines with a $297K win on the 2021 NFL Draft.
