Browns
vs.
Bengals
Week 7
NFL Pick
10/23/16
The Bengals got the joy of facing the perfect storm: an angry Tom Brady making his home debut this season, a healthy Rob Gronkowski, and also a motivated Rob Ninkovich. The Patriots two tightend sets have proven to be unstoppable both in the past and now the present with Gronk and the Black Unicorn, Martellus Bennett.
Tom Brady dropped 376 yards on the Bengals; Gronkowski ACCounted for 162 of those. Gronk, as he usually does, looked like a man amongst boys. The Bengals simply had no answer outside of playing somewhat dirty.
The Bengals tried to slow the Game down with the run, but didn’t have much success with that in the second half. After losing the lead, the Bengals had to turn to Andy Dalton and AJ Green, both of which did a good job, but they weren’t enough to beat the Patriots. The Bengals have now dropped to 2 and 4, but surprisingly that’s not all that bad in the AFC North right now. They are still well within striking distaNCe of taking over the division lead.
Cleveland is still winless and may have lost their best player, so far this year, to injury. Terrelle Pryor is dealing with a hamstring issue and we all know how devastating those can be to a speedy wide receiver or running back or quarterback… whatever you want to call Terrelle Pryor because he does it all for the Browns.
The Browns quarterback, Cody Kessler, played a pretty darn good Game and had the Browns in position to win the Game. However, like the majority of the Browns Games this year, they were in position to win, but just could not get over that hump. A lot of coaches say that “you have to learn to win.” The Browns are in that spot right now. They’re competitive, they just don’t know how to win yet.
These two offenses rank towards the bottom of the league using yards per point to rank. The Browns offensive yards per point number of 18.5 is good for 28th in the NFL while the Bengals number of 20.1 ranks them 30th. (Yes, Bengals offense worse than Browns).
The current line is Bengals -9.5. Very hard to trust the Bengals offense to extend a margin here with an offense like that. Let’s not forget this is a 2-4 team and much of this line has to do with what the Bengals have done in the past as opposed to what they have done this year. Browns +9.5