Week 4 NFL (Thursday Night Football):

#1:  Cincinnati Bengals -3

The line opened at -2.5 CIN on Sunday, but the sharps snapped those up and the current number is -3.  Still, I love this play.  The offseason number was -4.5 CIN so we have a 1.5-point adjustment to the initial bookmakers’ power ratings on this matchup.  It actually might be justified, as Cincy has under-performed and Miami over-performed.  But I think this is an extremely rough spot for the Dolphins. 

First, they’re playing on the road on a short week on Thursday Night Football.  Typically I don’t think the impact of Thursday games is felt as much early in the year, but we’re in week 4 now and this is when we should start seeing an advantage for the home team on TNF.  Furthermore, Miami is coming off a huge upset of the Bills, a team that most are picking to win the Super Bowl this year.  In that game, the Bills ran 90 plays (average is ~63 per game) and controlled the ball for almost 41 minutes.  Do you think Miami’s D might have a serious ‘fatigue’ issue on a short week?  This is a defense that ranks in the bottom-10 against the pass (29^th in Efficiency / 26^th in PYA-against) on the season, and coming off such a huge win while staying on the field for so many plays, and it’s fairly easy to expect a huge letdown on a super short week.  To make matters even more appetizing for this Cincy offense, is that Miami ranks dead-last in QB-pressure rate (Hurries + Knockdowns + Sacks per drop-back) so far this season, at only 8.0%.  League average is ~23%.  Cincy struggled against Pittsburgh (top-5 with Watt in the lineup) and Dallas (#3 on the season) while dominated the Jets who have the 6^th worst QB-pressure rate.  Now facing a defense that ranks last in this metric, and I think Burrow and Co. will move the ball at will here. 

On the other side, we do have an explosive Miami offense of course, with a lot of speed at WR position.  But Cincy is a good pass defense, ranking 8^th against the pass in efficiency and 7^th in PYA-against.  Sure, the quality of their opponents so far has been nothing to sneeze at (PIT with Trubisky, DAL with Dak out, and NYJ with old-man Flacco) but this team still held their opponents without a touchdown in the last 6 quarters.  We all saw Tagovailoa wobbling with concussion-like symptoms on the field after a hit from Matt Milano and then the team and player blaming the physical instability on some sort of a back issue.  He came back in in the second half, but regardless, expecting him to be at 100% on such a short week is probably unrealistic. 

All in all, this is a really good spot for the Bengals and a tough one for Miami.  There are a number of key factors that favor the home team, and I expect a better performance from the Bengals than the visitors in this matchup. 

Good Luck