Browns
vs.
Eagles
Week 1
NFL Pick with Analysis
9/11/16
The Cleveland Browns are going to head up to the City of Brotherly Love to take on the Philadelphia Eagles. Cleveland brings in RG3 and has seen the emergeNCe of Terrelle Pryor in the preseason so far. However, we all know that they are awaiting the return of Josh Gordon. Cleveland explored with the Johnny Football experiment, now they’re going to explore with the RG3 experiment.
The Eagles are currently -5.5 at betonline and 5 dimes with a total of 43. (This being written a week out)
Cleveland is in a much better situation with RG3 at the helm. However, what did Cleveland do to get better in the backfield? Duke Johnson is great for a ppr fantasy football league, but that doesn’t translate into yards, points, or wins.
Isaiah Crowell has been subpar so far, but hey, they have every opportunity to prove me wrong. I’m not going to get into the statistics of the Browns last year because they are an entirely different team with RG3, Terrelle Pryor, and the eventual return of Josh Gordon.
The Philadelphia Eagles have pure athletes on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball. These guys can fly and if Sam Bradford can stop complaining/thinking about the security of his position as a starter and just do what Sam Bradford can do, this team could really fly.
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They have all kinds of speed and raw talent at the receiver position, but they need to refine their route running skills a little more. Their tight ends are solid as well. The Eagles were able to put up 23.6 points per Game last year which would rank them as 13th in the league. That’s not too shabby for a young offensive team.
We’ll see if Ryan Matthews can stay healthy and become what he was projected to be. The guy has talent and has found a nose for the endzone so I’d expect that hunger to continue this year. Look for them to sprinkle in trick plays and plays to simply get the ball in their play makers’ hands.
The Eagles defense is really coNCerning. I do not see how they got any better on the defensive side and that’s saying a lot for a team that ranked as the 5th worst defense in the NFL last year. I guess they got rid of Byron Maxwell, who had penalty after penalty called on him, but he is a pretty good player. So I have questions about whether their defense is going to be any better this year.
Early lines favor Philadelphia by 6. This translates into a 70.7% chance to win this Game. My Elo model also shows a spread of close to 6 with roughly a 69% chance to win this Game. However, when we give the Eagles a couple of points for home field advantage, that pushes Our number to -8 and also pushes us past the key number of -7.
With that being said, I’d say the Eagles win and cover the spread due to offensive firepower and the Browns trying to figure out how to mesh together. Eagles -5.5