CLEVELAND -2½ -110 Buffalo
1:00 PM EST. This line stuck out to many, seeing as the 2-6 team is favored over the 6-2 team. It stuck out to us too but for different reasons. Buffalo has faced one of the easiest schedules to date while the Browns have faced the toughest. Cleveland lost to Brandon Allen and the Broncos this past Sunday, while Buffalo won and covered against Washington. However, if you look deep into the boxscore in Cleveland’s loss to Denver, it was revealed that the Browns had eight more first downs than the Broncos. They ran 30 more plays. They had the ball for 11 more minutes. Cleveland won the turnover battle. It's hard for a team doing all of that to lose a football game. Six trips inside the red zone and another inside the Denver 25-yard line resulted in 19 points, and that was the difference in the game. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s 24-9 cover last week was more impressive on paper than on the field, as the game stats were almost dead even.
Four consecutive losses and a 0-3 mark at home only build the frustration for the Browns. Freddie Kitchens might not make it to 2020 or even the end of this season. Thing is, the Brownies stock is so low and they’re not that bad. In that slopfest lost to the Patriots in which they turned the ball over three times early in the game, they were only outgained by 8 yards. In the Browns 40-25 win over Baltimore, they outgained the Ravens by 135 yards. For Cleveland, it’s been a season of miscues, turnovers at the worst time and the inability to finish drives off and that could continue here but we’ll take our chances when its stock is this low and when the oddsmakers have dangled a proverbial carrot in front of Buffalo’s name.
One side note to this game is that Browns wideouts Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry were forced to change their cleats at halftime of Cleveland’s Week 9 contest in Denver. The receivers were wearing custom-painted shoes that did not conform with the NFL’s uniform policy. In fact, the Browns were told the receivers would not be allowed to play in the second half if they returned to the field wearing the shoes in question. While that may not seem like anything to significant, when a team is losing, it matters a lot. It represents individuality and not team unity. We’ll see where the price ends up on Sunday but if we pass on the Browns, that’s why.