Betting line, odds, picks for Thursday Night Football – Ravens at Buccaneers

In our rundown of week 7 results ATS, NFLbets noted that NFL bettors need to accept certain realities that have been taken for granted in some cases for most of the 21st century to date. For example, consider thfor e lines on the week 8 Thursday Night Football game:

Baltimore Ravens +2 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers, over/under 46½ points

The Ravens have completed one-third of the season at an infuriating 4-3 SU/2-4-1 ATS and haven’t won SU/ATS since week 3 at New England. Lamar Jackson is as much a double-threat as ever and as he can be with limited weapons; nothing new there, but this year’s reality says that the Baltimore defense is stunningly bad, worse than last season and historically inferior.

How bad? As it stands, the Ravens are for the second consecutive year a bottom-10 defense in yards allowed. If the current output continues, this defense would be the first to rank bottom-10 in both yards and points allowed since the inaugural team of 1998.

The reality for the 3-4 SU/2-5 ATS Buccaneers? Well, you know the deal. Their QB, whatsisname, is 45 years old and, excepting Leonard Fournette, isn’t getting a hackuva lot in support from his offense. The star-studded defense is holding up, but when the offense is bottom-5 in time of possession and scoring 17.7 points per game (15.5 if you take out the 41-31 loss to Kansas City), the proverbial odds are not in their favor.

So NFL bettors must throw away a lot of preconceptions – and a lot of recent history. Tom Brady isn’t Tom Brady anymore; he’s not even Tampa Bay Tom Brady right now. As for the Ravens of Harbaugh & Lamar, they’ve played three teams on Thursday nights since 2018 with a 1-2 SU/ATS record. Not a very helpful sample size..

All things being equal, a look at all 2022 Thursday games show that home teams are 4-3 SU/ATS, with unders going 5-2. This latter stat is somewhat revealing as part of their dominating 57-36-1 success of unders thus far into the season – and NFLbets is on the lookout for overs to start hitting more frequently soon.

But how can we trust this Buccaneers offense to perform on a short week when they haven’t all season? On the other hand, who’s to say Cade Otton won’t enjoy a breakout game and be the difference for Tampa Bay? On the other other hand, how do we know this isn’t he week that Brady’s head explodes?

NFLbets is going to side with the stability here on the basis that sometimes football is just football. Simply go with the better team in what is essentially a “Pick ‘Em”: Take the Baltimore Ravens +2 at Tampa Bay.

– written by Os Davis