Each week during the 2021 NFL season, Sports Info Solutions will highlight the spread of three games including Monday Night Football.
Minnesota Vikings at Baltimore Ravens
If you’re going to believe in the Vikings in this game, you’re probably looking at how they’ve allowed 20 points or fewer in four of their last five games and hoping that run can continue. You’re looking at the team’s NFL-best sack percentage, seeing that Lamar Jackson got sacked five times in his last start, and wishing for more of the same.
Your wish might be granted.
But the underlying numbers aren’t favorable. If you do that, you’re looking past their ranks in Pass Defense Points Saved Per Play (27th), run defense points saved per play (24th), and a 12th-ranked pressure rate (pressure rate is more predictive of future sacks than sack rate is). Minnesota also just lost Danielle Hunter for the season with a torn pectoral muscle.
The best hope for a Vikings believer might be that the offense can rack up yardage and turn that yardage into points. The Ravens have allowed four teams to throw for at least 340 yards against them and those teams averaged 33.5 points.
Kirk Cousins’s underlying numbers are strong enough to be considered an upper-echelon quarterback. Cousins ranks fourth in Total Points Earned, with the three quarterbacks ahead of him — Matthew Stafford, Kyler Murray, and Tom Brady — all having played eight games to Cousins’s seven.
Dalvin Cook has shown flashes of being what he was in 2020, when he rushed for 1,557 yards. But he’s averaging 2.1 yards after contact this season compared to 2.8 in 2020. Baltimore’s run defense had been quite good this season until the Bengals dinged them for a couple of big runs in the fourth quarter last week.
The hope for Cook to have a big day would be in the Ravens’ lack of both familiarity and success against the Vikings’ scheme. The Vikings have the fifth-highest percentage of runs utilizing zone blocking of any team. The Ravens have seen zone blocking schemes the 29th-most of any team (93 plays) and they rank sixth-worst in the league in Run Defense Points Saved Per Play against it.
As for Lamar Jackson, he’s just behind Cousins, fifth in Total Points Earned. The one instance in which the Vikings faced an agile quarterback, they gave up 34 points to the Cardinals and Kyler Murray, though they did intercept him twice and sack him three times.
Denver Broncos at Dallas Cowboys
It seems like the Cowboys are well-positioned for a big day. The Broncos not only traded Von Miller, they also lost cornerback Bryce Callahan to a knee injury. Callahan’s stats don’t match those of Patrick Surtain, but he ranked in the Top 40 in Pass Defense Points Saved Per Play, which makes him tough to replace. And if Michael Gallup returns for the Cowboys this week (as they hope he will), Denver will have its hands full.
But maybe there should be a little more skepticism with the Cowboys. There’s lots of excitement about how Cooper Rush finished last week’s win but perhaps there should be a closer look at his overall performance. Rush ranked next-to-last among quarterbacks in Passing Points Earned last week. The spread in this game may be more appropriate for Dak Prescott.
Speaking of Prescott, if he plays, the Broncos are a team against whom he should have a high comfort level. The Broncos play man coverage the most often of any NFL team (although we might expect them to lean on it slightly less with Callahan out). Dak Prescott ranks fourth in Passing Points Earned Per Play vs Man Coverage, compared to 17th versus Zone. Dak’s success versus man would be one of the biggest arguments you could make on why the Cowboys would cover this spread.
You might think that one area where the Cowboys could stub their toe is in stopping the running game. Dallas ranks 30th in Run Defense Total Points, providing an opening for either Melvin Gordon or Javonte Williams to have a big game. While the Cowboys were relatively easy to run on in Weeks 1 through 4 (bottom five in the NFL in Positive%), they’ve been much tougher since Week 5 (ranking in the top five in that same stat).
The Broncos have scored fewer than 20 points in four of their last five games and the one game in which they did score 20, their offense was hindered by three Teddy Bridgewater interceptions. And remember that the Cowboys' defense has tallied multiple turnovers in every game except for their last one.
Chicago Bears at Pittsburgh Steelers
The Bears have been outscored by at least 10 points in each of their five losses. Those games were to the Rams, Browns, Packers, Buccaneers, and 49ers.
So the question with this game is whether or not the current incarnation of the Steelers is in the same class as those teams were at the time that those teams played Chicago.
But if you’re going to do that, you should look at it from the Pittsburgh side too. Because each of the Steelers wins has been by eight points or fewer.
What makes things even more confusing is that the Bears have two wins against teams that beat the Steelers – the Raiders and Bengals.
Trying to sort things out makes it even more confusing.
On the surface, Ben Roethlisberger is doing fine. He’s thrown 99 passes in his last three games without an interception and has been sacked only four times.
But there’s some aspect of his play that is a mirage. In those three weeks, the Steelers rank last in the NFL in Passing Points Earned Per Play. That said, the Bears defense is nothing particularly special, ranking 19th in Pass Rush Points Per Play and 30th in pass coverage.
The Steelers’ defense has played well but will now be without Melvin Ingram, whom they traded to the Chiefs. It hasn’t allowed 30 points to anyone and it has only allowed 400 yards once. In the last three weeks, the Steelers rank third in Run Defense Points Saved Per Play and second in Pass Rush Points Saved Per Play.
They’ll both challenge and be challenged by Justin Fields, who has been sacked at least four times in three straight games but also rushed for 103 yards last week against the 49ers. Pittsburgh should cause him more trouble than the 49ers did last week. San Francisco ranks 28th in pressure rate even after their game against the Bears. Pittsburgh enters this game ranked 10th.
Fields has struggled the most against the Browns and Bucs, two teams that rank in the top six in pressure rate. He did lead a win against the Raiders, though that game was won much more by the play of Chicago’s running backs and its defense.
The Bears would get a considerable boost if David Montgomery returned from a sprained knee. Their running backs ranked second in Points Earned Per Play in the first four games of the season, when Montgomery was healthy. The Bears’ best shot is probably to try to win it with their legs rather than Fields’s arm.
With the numbers pointing so many different ways, unless you feel particularly strongly about things tilting in one of the directions we’ve referenced, the best option here may be not to play.
