If you need an alternative to Cowboys-Eagles at night, it’s my understanding that Young Justice will be streaming on HBO Max starting tomorrow (Nov. 1).
The actual game of the day is clearly the renewed rivalry between the Steelers (6-0) and Ravens (5-1). For a change, it’s a game where both teams have their intended starting quarterback. It’s actually the first time Ben Roethlisberger will match his offense with Lamar Jackson’s offense. The Ravens are a 4-point home favorite, though playing in Baltimore isn’t as daunting this season as it would be under normal, non-pandemic circumstances. The Chiefs already waxed the Ravens 34-20 in that building this year.
How will the Steelers fare? I have to say last week’s win in Tennessee was both encouraging and discouraging. I picked the Steelers to lose 27-24, which is the score they ended up winning by after Stephen Gostkowski missed a field goal that would have forced overtime. But some of the road concerns with protecting the ball popped up again. Yes, Ben Roethlisberger threw three interceptions, but there were some extenuating circumstances there with throws into the end zone late in each half and a ball deflected high into the air at the line. What gets overlooked is the Steelers fumbled on the first two drives, but were fortunate to recover both and score 10 points. Throw in some drops and penalties and it was a sloppy performance despite the 20-point lead, third-down domination and ultimately a win.
On the other hand, the defense looked solid in holding down a potent Tennessee offense. They’ll have to do that again with the Ravens’ special ground attack that again leads the NFL in yards and yards per carry. Now one reason I’m optimistic this week is that Jackson has not been dominating through the air this season. He hasn’t thrown for 200 yards in his last four games and barely reached that number in his second game. Also, in his only start against the Steelers last year, he passed for 161 yards, 1 TD, 3 INT and was clearly pressing in a rare instance of the Ravens trailing in the second half of a game. Unfortunately, the Steelers had Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges at QB that day and JuJu Smith-Schuster lost a fumble in overtime that set up the Baltimore victory.
Now with Roethlisberger at quarterback, the Steelers have a more potent offense to match with Jackson, but this will still have to be a defensive game. In his career, Roethlisberger is 0-7 in Baltimore when the Ravens score 20+ points. Guess what? The Ravens have scored 20+ points in all 28 of Jackson’s regular-season starts. He’s only been held under that number in both playoff games, which looks really bad for him, but there’s nothing he can do about that this weekend. The playoffs and Kansas City have been the problem teams in his career, but we’ll see if the Steelers can force him into a bad game for the second time in two tries.
It doesn’t seem likely that the Steelers can dink and dunk their way to a productive offensive day against this aggressive Baltimore defense. I think Roethlisberger has to hold the ball longer, maybe take some sacks, but also fire some shots down the field to Chase Claypool and James Washington to get some big plays that lead to points. It’s what the Chiefs have mastered with Mahomes against this defense. If it’s a minimal running day combined with the dink and dunk, look for Baltimore to hold the Steelers to a season-low in scoring. But if Roethlisberger does air it out more, he of course has to avoid the turnovers he had last week.
This should be a good one, but I’m just going to lean towards the rested Baltimore team that has played very well this year outside of that Kansas City game. It would be a huge win for the Steelers as the schedule really favors a 10-0 start before the teams meet again on Thanksgiving night. However, I think the Steelers will be looking for the season split that night as they’ll need a game to adjust to this team.
Final: Ravens 26, Steelers 20
NFL Week 8 Predictions
Here are the rest of my picks this week after another L on TNF. The Falcons just always do the opposite of what I want them to do.
We have our biggest spread of the week with the Jets as a 20-point underdog against the Chiefs. My Twitter is so far in favor of the Chiefs covering, but I wavered on this one.
You have to account for the obligatory Chiefs fumble and a lot of garbage time. While I could see the Chiefs winning 34-13, I don’t think they’ll have a monster blowout in back-to-back weeks after taking care of the Broncos 43-16 last week. I think the Chiefs will look for a huge ground game with Le’Veon Bell making his second appearance with the team in a revenge game for him on Adam Gase. When the Chiefs are ball-control efficient, that just depresses the score more and gives the Jets a chance to hang around in a 26-7 type of game. Honestly, I’d sooner bet on the over for Bell’s rushing yards than anything involving the point spread in this game. Chiefs by 14+ sounds good though.
NFL teams that are 20-point underdogs are 10-3 ATS and 0-13 SU since 1980.
Vote to Dump Trump
Finally, I just wanted to say that I screwed up four years ago when I did not vote for president. I was not a fan of Hillary Clinton, but I knew she was the superior choice to Donald Trump. They were not equally bad. I didn’t vote because I didn’t actually think this country would elect someone like that, and now we’re paying the price in the Supreme Court and who knows where else going forward. Clinton won my county, but lost my state (PA) in 2016 and we can’t let that happen again.
So this time I made sure to send in my mail-in ballot early and made the only logical choice I could: Joe Biden/Kamala Harris. I would have preferred Bernie Sanders over Biden, but I know this is the only vote I can make that will accomplish the goal of getting rid of Trump and his awful administration.
I know I’m probably preaching to the choir since I’ve spent much of this year cleansing my followers of MAGA/Trump supporters, but I hope you voted to remove Trump too. The next week, or weeks to come, could be a dangerous time for our country. I’m very concerned that on Tuesday night Trump is just going to declare victory since facts mean nothing anymore, and that any votes that come in after midnight are “fraudulent” and that there are many “irregularities” with the mail-in ballots, which we know will be largely Biden/Democratic voters. I’m worried they will try to steal this election, which is why the bigger the blowout, the harder it will be for them to pull this off.
So please vote this week if you haven’t already. And if you’re going to vote for Trump, put down the Kool-Aid first and think this through.
Captain Comeback: NFL Analysis by Scott Kacsmar 
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