*****Troy at Florida International*****
Tuesday, 10/25/11 @ 8:00 pm ET
Only $15 for this Guaranteed pick!!!!!
I gave you another easy winner last night with the Jaguars and if you missed out, then you can make it up with this easy winner tonight. I'll post yesterdays writeup for you to see down below!!
>>>>>Yesterdays Easy MNF Winner!!!<<<<<
Baltimore (4-1, 1-1 V) at Jacksonville (1-5, 1-2 H)
8:30 pm ET, Monday, October 24, 2011
EverBank Field, Jacksonville, Florida
(Baltimore -9 ½, 40)
Here we go with the Week 7 Monday Night Football game between the visiting, 4-1 Baltimore Ravens and the home team, 1-5 Jacksonville Jaguars. This is a point in the season where Jacksonville desperately needs to get their offense going but they are up against one of the leagues best defensive units. The Jaguars have been hurting in a bad way offensively only finding the end zone just 5 times in the last 5 games. All the Ravens have been doing here these past few games is just cashing in covering the spreads and winning games. Plus they have only allowed 71 total points on the season so far. Knowing this, the only hope Jacksonville may have is to pray their defense can step it up too and keep things close. It may turn into one of those old school Ravens “Under” type contests. Jacksonville just has a ton of problems putting positive yardage and points up on the board right now. Rookie QB, Blaine Gabbert is 0-4 as a starter and is only completing right at 49% of his passes. As a team, they have only thrown for 4 touchdowns which is second fewest in the league. Plus, they are dead last in the league with only 826 total passing yards on only 83 completions. But if you are thinking Baltimore passes that much more, then you are wrong as they have only completed 89 passes through their first 5 games. Their bread and butter on offense lately has been their running game. They average 121 yards per game on the ground. They did get off to a slow start in their win last week against the Texans. It took a second half, come from behind effort to pull out that win by scoring 16 unanswered points.
Now everybody knows about the outstanding defense the Ravens traditionally have and still has with the likes of Terrell Suggs, Ed Reed and Ray Lewis roaming around. And this will be no different as they are sure to cause chaos and be in Gabbert’s face all night. They’ll definitely need to find a way to get their running game going with Maurice Jones-Drew just as the Ravens will try and establish theirs with Ray Rice. The Jaguars do rank 8th in the league in yards allowed and that’s despite spending a lot of time on the field because of the play of their offense. They still only give up an average of 115 rushing yards per game so that fact may help to keep them in the game if anything will. Flacco will try and pass against the Jaguars but it may not be as easy as taking candy from a baby so-to-speak as the secondary for Jacksonville is probably their best unit on that side of the ball. What can I say about things in this game? On paper, Baltimore should have no problem winning or covering. Here are the facts. Baltimore averages 29 points per game on 367 yards with an average of 121 coming by way of the run. They average giving up 14 points per game and 286 yards. Meanwhile, Jacksonville averages scoring 12 points per game on 260 yards. They allow around 325 yards per game with 115 of those by way of rushing. That has turned into an opponents score of 22 points per game on average. I mean a lot of things would have to go right for the Jags to keep things close or even think about pulling off the upset here. Their defense would have to match the intensity of that of the Ravens. They’d have to generate and create some turnovers and play a sound game on the offensive side of the ball too. Is it possible to win? I’m going to say yes as all things are possible but it’s highly unlikely. Call me crazy now, but covering the point spread is definitely not out of the question. I mean Baltimore did have to play from behind to get the win against a beat up Texan squad where Flacco had a couple of turnovers. Meanwhile, despite losing their game, Gabbert did bring his team within 4 points in their 17-13 loss to the Steelers in which they easily covered the spread.
It is possible that the Jags are catching the Ravens at just the right time to at least come away staying within the point spread. The Jags are playing in front of a loud, home crowd in a prime time, Monday night game. They will definitely be hungry enough for a win which will help to save their head coaches job. The Ravens may be coming in taking Jacksonville lightly for several obvious reasons. They may also be slipping a little bit their selves as they outscored Houston, the Jets and the Cardinals by a combined score of 100-38 but that margin slipped just a little with their 29-14 victory over the Texans. In that win, they failed to score TD’s in 2 of their 4 trips to the red zone while only converting 3 of 11 on 3rd down chances. Flacco was also sacked a couple of times and threw an interception. He’s been sacked 10 times on the year and they only rank 28th in red zone efficiency with a 38% rating. I can see this being a letdown spot for Baltimore as far as a blowout is concerned. They will probably feel that there isn’t a whole lot of need to be throwing the ball all around and let their running backs do most of the work which will also help to keep things close and possibly low scoring. It will also help their possibility of not turning the ball over. On the other hand, Jacksonville may not test the run defense of Baltimore too much and let Gabbert air it out some. They really have nothing to lose and if he has a pretty good performance, then they have a decent chance of putting up some points. Plus it’s still pretty impressive that Jacksonville’s defense ranks 8th after facing teams like the Steelers, Panthers and Saints.
If Maurice Jones-Drew can even have an OK performance and the rest of the offense can have a good performance, then it’s possible that the defensive play of Jacksonville may can keep them hanging around. The secondary will key in on the Ravens WR, Anquan Boldin and try to slow up the play of the Flacco/Boldin combination. Look for the Jags middle linebacker Paul Posluszny to have another solid game as he leads his team in tackles with 55. He had a career high of 16 tackles last week against the Steelers and his performance will probably carry over into this game. I look for the Ravens to probably lead by double digits at some point in this game but the way I see it, if the Steelers allowed Jacksonville to hang around in their game on the road, then Jacksonville surely has the ability to hang around to make it closer than people may expect at home. I have the Jags at +9 ½ right now and am buying the ½ to make it an even +10. Good Luck!
Jacksonville Jaguars +10 (buy the ½)
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