Pick: Bengals -6 (By Wedneday morning, this spread had moved to Bengals -6½.)
Whether it was because Deshaun Watson was rusty or because their offense struggled with the midseason change at quarterback, the Browns’ offense wasn’t great Sunday against the Texans. Cleveland won, 27-14, but its offense didn’t score a touchdown, with the team instead getting scores via fumble return, punt return and interception return. (It was only the fourth time since 2001 that one team got scores of that nature in the same game.) Of its 11 non-kneeldown drives, the Browns punted six times and had three others end because of turnovers or a safety, and one of its two field goals came after a drive of only eight yards. Watson averaged a terrible 3.91 adjusted yards per attempt.
The problem for Cleveland is that its defense (27th in DVOA) and special teams (25th in DVOA before Sunday’s game) usually are pretty lousy and probably can’t be counted upon to produce two games in a row, particularly when the opponent is not the awful Texans but rather a surging team like the Bengals, who have won four straight since a 32-13 loss to the Browns on Oct. 31.
In that game, the Browns sacked Joe Burrow five times, which represents 20 percent of their sacks this season. Burrow’s protection has gotten a lot better, however: In the season’s first eight games, ending with the first game against Cleveland, the Bengals were allowing 3.6 sacks per game. In the four games since that Browns loss, Cincinnati has given up only five sacks total.
The Browns’ rushing defense ranks 31st in DVOA, so the Bengals also shouldn’t have much trouble moving the ball with its running backs, whether it’s Joe Mixon (who has missed the past two games with a head injury) or Samaje Perine (who had 106 rushing yards against the Chiefs on Sunday while also catching six passes). Running backs are averaging 4.8 yards per attempt against the Browns (26th in the NFL).
With Watson clearly not in game shape and the Bengals on the rise, I’ll take the favorite here.
Here are the rest of this week’s matchups and point spreads.
