What’s up Karma Nation! Welcome back to another edition of my Monday Night Football Showdown Throwdown Article. I hope you had an amazing week 14. Let’s cap off the week with tons of green on this Monday Night Football slate! Make sure if you haven’t, to subscribe to our NFL Core Plays. Showdowns are fun but make sure you get in on all our prop plays for these showdown slates. I usually run a prop cash play then GPPs for showdowns. If you haven’t signed up for the prop sites that we are partnered with, check them out! Monkeyknifefight and Prizepicks, Promo code: KARMA, have been around for a couple of years and are continuously growing in size and being available in more and more states. If you have further questions about the sites hop in our DISCORD and message me. Our NFL Core plays package includes access to all of the expert’s NFL Prop plays! What are you waiting for? Join KARMA NATION today!

Showdown slates are different from normal slates and vary from site to site.

On DraftKings, you have a CPT spot with a 1.5x multiplier, this is similar to FanDuel, the difference is the salary for the CPT scales 1.5x as well. On FanDuel, the MVP spot it does not. This will lead to more unique lineups and fewer ties for DraftKings compared to FanDuel. Which is one of the reasons why I prefer DraftKings showdown slates to FanDuel. On DraftKings, you select five flex spots and one CPT, while on FanDuel you select four flex and one MVP.

Vegas Totals

The Ravens are 3-point favorites tonight against the Browns. With a 45.5-point game total.

Historical Matchup

The Browns and Ravens will be facing off for the second time this year. The Browns were embarrassed in week 1 the first time they played each other. The Browns look like a much better team this time around, as the Ravens look like a much worse team. Over the last 10 games, Baltimore has owned the Browns, going 8-2 over that time and 7-3 ATS. Although, the over has only hit 4 times in those games.

09/13/20: Browns: 06 Ravens: 38 Ravens Spread: -7.0 O/U: 47.5

12/22/19: Browns: 15 Ravens: 31 Ravens Spread: -10.0 O/U: 49.0

09/29/19: Browns: 40 Ravens: 25 Ravens Spread: -7.0 O/U: 47.5

12/30/18: Browns: 24 Ravens: 26 Ravens Spread: -7.0 O/U: 40.5

10/07/18: Browns: 12 Ravens: 09 Ravens Spread: -3.0 O/U: 44.5

12/17/17: Browns: 10 Ravens: 27 Ravens Spread: -6.5 O/U: 42.0

09/17/17: Browns: 10 Ravens: 24 Ravens Spread: -7.5 O/U: 39.0

10/10/16: Browns: 07 Ravens: 28 Ravens Spread: -7.5 O/U: 44.0

09/18/16: Browns: 20 Ravens: 25 Ravens Spread: -4.5 O/U: 41.5

11/30/15: Browns: 27 Ravens: 33 Ravens Spread: +6.0 O/U: 41.0

Quarterbacks

This game is going to come down to the running games for these teams most likely. It appears we are going to have sustained winds of 20-25 MPH. Which for two teams that love to run the ball, I wouldn’t be surprised if neither team’s QB passed for more than 200 yards. Obviously, that would mean that Lamar Jackson would have the better game, because of his rushing upside.

Baker Mayfield has shown his upsides and downs, but we have seen in these bad weather games that the Browns have no issues running the ball 40 times. In the two games Mayfield played with over 20 MPH winds, he is averaging 22.5 attempts per game, 127 passing yards, while not recording a touchdown or interception. It was the ground game that did everything for him.

The Ravens defense has been good when they are healthy too. Although, they may be without one of their best corners, Jimmy Smith who is dealing with an ankle injury. The Browns look like a much better team this time around and taking the ball out of Baker’s hands should help them avoid another blowout. The game script should be on his side tonight as the Browns are underdogs in this game, but is someone I am avoiding this week.

Lamar Jackson should have a much easier time tonight than Mayfield tonight. Mainly because of his rushing upside. Jackson has been one of the best running QBs in the league since he got the starting job last year. He is leading all QBs in rushing yards this season, averaging 61 rushing yards per game. He only has four rushing touchdowns this season compared to last year’s seven.

Running Backs

Both teams will be featuring committees. These running backs have pretty defined roles luckily. This means depending on predicting game script you can play different guys.

Player	Snaps	Routes	Targets	Receptions	Yards	Attempts	Yards	TD	RZ carries	i5 Carries	i5 TDs	FPPG	PTs/Snap
Nick Chubb	135	42	5	4	58	76	464	3	11	4	2	74.2	0.55
Kareem Hunt	137	61	10	7	62	56	210	1	12	6	1	40.2	0.29

 

Hunt has been mainly the pass-catching back and used in the offense while Chubb has been the ground and pound guy. Those roles have been a little foggy lately as Chubb has run more routes than Hunt over the last two weeks. They both get work in the RedZone. Hunt has been seen finishing off games as well. They are perfectly fine to play together in the same line.

 

The Ravens running backs are a much tougher situation to figure out. No one is going to get the workhorse load in this offense and we have to just deal with that. Even though I heard touts saying J.K Dobbins was going to be the workhorse back last week even with no data to support that. I even saw someone lie about Dobbins’ snaps the last time every back was healthy in a game even though Mark Ingram got hurt 5 snaps into it. Anyway, we saw another pretty evenly split backfield for the Ravens.

Don’t get me wrong, Dobbins is definitely the best running back on the team that doesn’t mean he will get the workhorse load. Since week 6 they have only played two games with fully healthy RBs that finished the game.

Player	Snaps	Routes	Targets	Receptions	Yards	Attempts	Yards	TD	RZ carries	i5 Carries	i5 TDs	FPPG	PTs/Snap
JK Dobbins	50	25	2	1	1	16	84	1	6	2	1	7.7	0.31
Mark Ingram	28	12	3	3	25	11	33	0	2	0	0	4.4	0.31
Gus Edwards	33	12	1	1	31	14	143	0	2	0	0	9.2	0.56
Patrick Richard	49	9	3	3	13	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.1	0.09

Ravens Pass Catchers

The Ravens get back Jackson’s favorite option Mark Andrews this week. This is something the passing attack really missed. Luckily for the Ravens, they don’t care that much about their passing game when they have one of the most run-heavy teams in the league. Especially when they get the lead.

There are normally only two guys I play in the Ravens passing game on normal slates; Mark Andrews and Marquise Brown. Although, on showdown slates, we can move down and make a couple of other guys playable too.

Willie Snead does a majority of his work out of the slot. This leaves another player on the outside to take over for Dez Bryant, who will be missing time due to Coivd. Most likely we will see Miles Boykin taking over those routes as Devin Duvernay is mainly a slot guy who will be behind Snead. Even though Denzel Ward will be out for the Browns, they still have some good backups to take their place.

Terrence Mitchell should be on Boykin for the majority of the game tonight. This is where the Browns have the best matchup. Mitchell has been one of the better corners for the Browns, only allowing a reception on 57% of his targets. One of the best marks in the league. Kevin Johnson should be on Brown for the game tonight. Brown has the speed advantage to get past Johnson but is mainly a boom or bust play. He has been seeing a  huge increase in target share since Andrews and Snead have been out, but that will fall back down to average with them back.

Browns Pass Catchers

Since the Browns have lost Odell they seem to be a lot more run-heavy, which helped them win more games playing to their strengths. Although, there are still some valuable plays just not as much of a potent passing attack especially when they get the lead. The game script is going to be extremely important for both teams.

Cleveland mainly runs four pass catchers in their offense. Jarvis Landry, Rashad Higgins, Austin Hooper, and Donovan Peoples-Jones. Then they bring in David Njoku and Harrison Bryant for around 30% of the passing downs. Higgins and Landry make up the one-two punch for the Browns passing attack. Then Peoples-Jones comes in for the 3 WR sets and they really don’t use anyone outside of those 3 for WRs. Higgins is coming off a huge 9 target game, that was only the second time since OBJ went down with an ACL tear that he saw more than 4 targets. This was likely due to the eruption of the Browns passing last week against the Titans. These guys seem to be all priced up because of that too. I would not expect more than 3 or 4 targets tonight. If you are looking for a more consistent Browns player Landry is your best bet. He has seen 9+ targets in 50% of the games that Odell has missed this season and can see plenty of low aDOT throws in the slot in this windy game. I am not expecting Baker to throw for more than 200-220 yards so there is not going to be a lot to go around. I suggest picking Landry plus maybe one more in the passing game and that is it. This game should be won on the ground.