Monday Night Football Betting: Why the Over/Under Is the Most Appealing Action Tonight
The Baltimore Ravens hosting the Indianapolis Colts for tonight’s Week 5 finale is certainly an American Football game.
Both teams are coming off of big wins, as the Ravens dominated the Denver Broncos and the Colts notched their first win of the season by beating the *checks notes* now 1-4 Miami Dolphins (though their win was a pretty convincing win, too).
Anyway, this one may get ugly.
Here is how numberFire ranks each team heading into tonight’s game using our nERD metric and Net Expected Points (NEP):
| Team | nERD | nERD Rank | Offensive NEP Rank |
Defensive NEP Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indianapolis Colts | -2.19 | 19 | 27 | 15 |
| Baltimore Ravens | 3.39 | 10 | 16 | 23 |
Let’s go straight into the bets!
Inside the Bets
Our model has the Ravens as heavy home favorites, winning outright 73.3% of the time but covering the 7-point spread only 45.6% of the time.
With odds of -340 on the Ravens moneyline and -115 for them to cover at FanDuel Sportsbook, the implied probabilities (77.2% and 53.5%, respectively) compared to our model suggest skipping the Ravens here (same from the Colts side as well).
Our model does like taking over (46.5 [-106]) giving that outcome a 54.1% chance compared to the implied probability of 51.5%. Not only does our model like the over, but four of the last five Ravens’ home games and four of the last six Colts’ away games have hit the over.
Ravens’ running back Latavius Murray hasn’t been incredibly effective so far this season, posting a -0.09 Rushing NEP per carry, but he has been successful with a Rushing Success Rate of 47.7%, which is 9th-best this season for running backs with at least 30 carries.
With this success rate, and considering Murray was given 18 carries last week, I like taking the over on 12.5 carries (-114) for Latavius tonight.
Lamar Jackson has thrown exactly one touchdown pass in each of his first four games this season. The Colts have been stingy this year against the run (-5.20 Rushing NEP coming into Week 5) and equally as good in the red zone (-0.21 Rushing NEP per attempt).
Each of these rank third-best in the league. If (really when) Baltimore scores, it’s likely to be on the arm of Lamar, so over 1.5 passing touchdowns at -104 odds is a good value.
A Final Note
The Ravens are 4-1 against-the-spread in their last five home games and have covered in four of the last five when favored by seven or more points (with last week's nail). The Colts are 3-2 against the spread in their last five road trips.
