Ravens Beat the Titans but Not the Spread, and Penalties Are Why

Ravens Beat the Titans Without Covering the Spread

Baltimore beat winless Tennessee 24-18 on Sunday, but DraftKings had the Ravens as 11.5-point favorites on ESPN's odds feed at 12:02 PM ET, so the win fell 5.5 points short of the number. The Ravens' coach was not celebrating.

It's obviously unacceptable.

Baltimore was flagged 13 times for 131 yards, its most in a game in six years, and the flags kept coming at bad moments. Nate Wiggins' illegal contact penalty gave Tennessee a red zone first down on the opening drive. A 29-yard Lamar Jackson scramble shrank to 7 yards on a holding call, and Chidobe Awuzie's 39-yard interference penalty set up a field goal that made it 24-10.

Ravens Penalty Problem by the Numbers

Minter called reducing penalties a major point of emphasis two weeks ago, and the problem has gotten worse. In August the Ravens were flagged for eight false starts in one training camp practice while the quarterbacks worked on a different cadence, ESPN reported.

Ravens at Falcons Odds: What the Market Did

DraftKings has taken a point off Baltimore for Sunday night in Atlanta. The Ravens opened as 4.5-point favorites and are 3.5-point favorites now, and the total fell from 48.5 to 46.5, per ESPN's odds feed as of October 5 at 3:27 PM ET.

The feed does not say why a line moved, so what follows is our reading.

Our Read: A Penalty Tax Can Cost the Cover and Not the Game

• Flags shorten margins. A 131-yard penalty day is the kind of noise that can cost a big favorite a cover without costing it the game, and it did both things at once here.
• The cause looks self-inflicted. Offense accounts for 61% of the penalties and the cadence problem dates to camp, so this is less likely to be a one-week fluke than a habit.
• The trim to -3.5 fits that view. A one-point cut is modest. It reads as the market charging a small fee for the discipline problem and nothing more.
• Beating a winless team is not a fix. Tennessee is still winless, and a clean game against Atlanta would say far more than Sunday did.

This is not a case for either side. It is a reminder to look at how a team won and not only at whether it did.

What to Watch Before Sunday Night

• Whether Baltimore's false starts drop in practice and in the first quarter against Atlanta.
• The status of Lamar Jackson's ankle, which ESPN's coverage called a concern after the game.
• Whether the Ravens' line keeps shrinking or settles at -3.5 as the week goes on.

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