The NFL schedule for Week 9 brings us a rematch of one of the best rivalries in professional football. The Pittsburgh Steelers will host the Baltimore Ravens and look to avenge their opening game stinker. We will be sharing our expert picks against the spread for the entire Week 9 schedule in the coming days. Today we start with this big game which is surprisingly easy to call.
Before we get into this week's picks, let's quickly review last week and where we are for the season with our ATS picks. Looking back, we had a horrible week making some indefensible "gut" picks that failed and still did OK.
We took the Seahawks at home over the Bengals, giving Seattle too much credit for home field and not respecting Cincinnati enough. We also bought into the Tebow hype and more importantly the Lions slide. Both of those picks in retrospect were horrible and yet we still managed to go 6-7 for the week which puts us at 59-51 for the season against the spread. Suck on that, Vegas!
Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers (-3.5): These two teams have a long history of close games but long history isn't always a good predictor of the future. What matters more is the Ravens recent road loss to Jacksonville and barely escaping with a home win over Arizona. Meanwhile, the Steelers have recovered from a slow start to the season and are rolling as shown by their destruction of the New England Patriots.
These two teams have fantastic defenses as always, but the difference right now is Ben Roethlisberger who is playing at an exceptional level. Joe Flacco might have been able to pick apart the young Cardinals corners but will not have such luck against Pittsburgh. If the defenses cancel each other out, the Big Ben plus home field plus revenge factor make this pick our lock of the week. Pick: Steelers
You can pick against us in our weekly contest which you can join here (ID: 55411, PW: arizona).