MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 9/11)
Daniel Kelley
Bryan Knowles: Hello and welcome back to the sixth part of our preseason over/under reviews! Having kicked the AFC off with the East on Monday, we turn our attention to the most-lauded division of 2023.
Last year’s AFC North boasted the Most Valuable Player, the Coach of the Year, the Assistant Coach of the Year, the Defensive Player of the Year, the Comeback Player of the Year, the Walter Payton Man of the Year, and the Deacon Jones Sack Leader, uh, of the Year. That’s a lot of hardware kicking about for a division that ultimately didn’t end up sending anyone to the Super Bowl!
Cale Clinton: This really feels like one of the tightest divisions in football. It is evident from the over/unders, where the two games of separation across the division are the tightest in the entire league. This division also has the highest floor in the league, with every team listed at 8.5 wins or better. There truly is no slouch in the AFC North.
It makes picking this division one of the hardest in this cycle. The lack of weak spots will make a handful of these picks shake out to chance. A handful of injuries and some lucky bounces are going to decide the entire order of this division. When the worst team in the division is run by a coach who has never finished worse than .500, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
Baltimore Ravens (10.5)
Bryan: If this was an over/under on the Ravens repeating as one of the best DVOA teams in history, I would take the under. They’ve lost their defensive coordinator and a number of his top assistants. They led the league in turnover differential, a stat which tends to regress towards the mean even if you didn’t lose the hottest young defensive mind in the sport. Lamar Jackson played a full season, which counts as unusual compared to his recent track record. Jackson also only threw seven interceptions, his 1.5% interception rate being well below his career average of 2.1%. There’s a sense that not only were the Ravens really good in 2023, but they also hit all of their lucky draws, too. You need skill and luck to be one of the top five teams in DVOA history, and while the former sticks around, the latter is fairly random.
Yes, this applies to San Francisco, too, but we’ve already finished with them; we’re talking about Baltimore now. Try to keep up.
Cale: This is a team going through a tremendous amount of turnover. Mike Macdonald for Zach Orr is the most glaring substitution, but it isn’t the only one. Roquan Smith loses his Robin, as Patrick Queen departs off a career year. Geno Stone also finally broke through to have a career year of his own, only for him to hit free agency as well. The offensive line is losing an offseason-high 3,083 snaps on the offensive line. Odell Beckham might not have been prime OBJ, but his departure still leaves Baltimore void of a starting player in 11 personnel.
This team will look different, and it might feel different, but I would argue that it won’t actually be much worse. The running back upgrade with Derrick Henry indicates the vibe shift offensively. This is going to be a bigger, burlier offense with Henry at the helm. Isaiah Likely posted a top-five receiving DYAR and DVOA on the season after taking over for an injured Mark Andrews. That, the loss of Beckham, and the unreliable nature of Rashod Bateman and Nelson Agholor will put the Ravens in significantly more 12 personnel examples. While a lot of the offensive line is rotating, most of the starting slots will be taken by players Baltimore has had waiting in the wings. Orr won’t have to wade through the teaching periods Macdonald had to installing this defense’s complicated pressure packages. This team could take some time to get comfortable, but by Week 18 we could be heading into January arguing this team barely missed a beat.
Bryan: I also think it’s possible Baltimore gets off to a slow start, as their schedule opens up very roughly. Road trips to Kansas City, Dallas and Cincinnati in the first five weeks aren’t exactly a way to ease into a season, hosting Buffalo isn’t exactly a cakewalk, either, and you can even stretch all the way to the Week 8 road game against Cleveland if you really want to worry about things. There’s a real chance the Ravens start 2-3 and 4-4, are a full two games behind the Bengals entering November, and we’re sitting here writing “what’s wrong with Baltimore?” stories.
Don’t believe them for a second. Just because everything might not go perfectly once again for Baltimore doesn’t mean they’re anything less than a top contender once more. Lamar Jackson remains MVP-caliber, and I’m excited to see what bringing in Derrick Henry will do for their ground game – the combination of Henry’s wrecking-ball style and Jackson’s elusiveness seems next-to-impossible to defend. The normal questions about the wide receivers still apply, and the offensive line has to replace Morgan Moses, John Simpson and Kevin Zeitler all at one time, but I still think this is a top-10 offense, if not necessarily a top-five one.
I’m also confident that the Ravens have in-house replacements for their defensive exodus, as no team has done a better job in recent years of preparing for turnovers than Baltimore. Patrick Queen, Geno Stone and Jadeveon Clowney are gone, but understudies like Odafe Owen and David Ojabo have been developed for just such an occasion. They also, you know, still have the best safety pair in football in Kyle Hamilton and Marcus Williams backing everything up, not to mention Roquan Smith and Kyle Van Noy and Michael Pierceand on and on and on and on.
Maybe we’re talking an 11-6 team rather than a 13-4 team; one battling for the division rather than home field advantage. But that’s still an over.
Cale: My biggest concern with Baltimore is what Bryan stated at the beginning. So much just went right for Baltimore last year. Zay Flowers – a Shrine Bowl phenom who shot up big boards late in the draft process – looked like the best receiver in the class at points last year. Veteran pickups like Clowney and Van Noy hit as well as they possibly could have. The defense and Lamar Jackson both remained extremely healthy. That hasn’t happened for Jackson since his first MVP season. The stars aligned in a perfect way for this team, and I just worry that everything doesn’t click that perfectly the next time around.
I can’t say under. Baltimore has hit double-digit wins in four of Jackson’s five seasons. The over is somehow the safe play, even at a 10.5 win total.
Cincinnati Bengals (10.5)
Bryan: Wait, I thought we covered the AFC contenders getting a quarterback back from a season-ending injury last time. And I could have sworn we’ve already dealt with the team waiting for a star receiver to end their hold out. You do 32 of these things, and the teams do begin to all blend together, but the Bengals more than most seem like a greatest hits collection of other teams’ offseason struggles.
Cale: And if we’re doing our greatest hits, I could re-run my Jets rant from earlier in this series and make another vibes based pick. General sentiment around this team just does not feel the best. Joe Burrow is a top-five quarterback in this league that has suffered two season-ending injuries on his rookie contract. Tee Higgins is stuck on the tag, and Trey Hendrickson has had both an extension request and a trade request denied. Cincinnati’s defense couldn’t tackle or stop the run to save their lives. Their offense no longer has a real running back. The team very much feels as though it’s at the end of its initial window of the Burrow Era.
However, I won’t be doing that! This team is better than it was last year, albeit more one-dimensional in some aspects. It’s going to come with the assumption that Cincinnati is just punting on their run game this season offensively. The improvement comes without the simple virtue of adding Burrow back. Even with the pass-happy bunch, one last run of Ja’Marr Chase and Higgins is objectively one of the best wide receiver duos in the league. The offensive line subbing Jonah Williams for whatever combination of Trent Brown and Amarius Mims is a net improvement. The defense gets Sam Hubbard back to full strength. He and Hendrickson will bookend a stopgap interior defender in Sheldon Rankins, a significant upgrade over the older and recently injured D.J. Reader. Cincinnati also saw what it was like to let Jessie Bates and Vonn Bell walk in the 2023 offseason, brought back Bell, and added Geno Stone off a career year. The biggest issue will be cornerback play (goodbye Chidobe Awuzie), but upgrading the safeties and the pass rush will mitigate the damage.
Bryan: I do have some areas of concern for the one AFC North team to miss the playoffs last season, even though Joe Burrow’s various injuries and ailments explain most of that. The running back room is terrible, with Zack Moss and Chase Brown as their top guys. I know Brown displayed some potential last year and paying Joe Mixon doesn’t feel like it would be the right move, either, but the lack of an established guy back there does give me pause. I’m not a huge fan of Mike Gesicki at tight end, either; he hasn’t topped even 500 yards in either of his last two seasons. You can explain away 2023 by just sort of vaguely gesturing at the Patriots’ quarterback room, and he was not at all a fit for Mike McDaniels’ offense in Miami, but it’s been a while since Gesicki was a useful player, and counting on him to rediscover his old form seems questionable. If you want to keep picking nits, we could ding the secondary, too, as Cincinnati lost Chidboe Awuzie this offseason. That means you’re dealing with D.J. Turner coming off of some rookie struggles and a young and not-overly-impressive Cam Taylor-Britt as your boundary corners. I think there are pockets of weakness here that the Bengals could have done a better job shoring up this offseason.
I think all I’m doing there, however, is separating the Bengals as a playoff contender rather than a Super Bowl contender. This is still a team that lives and dies by their passing attack, and a healthy Burrow alongside Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins is still too much for most teams to deal with. I am generally optimistic about the young defensive core Cincinnati hsa in place – eight of the 10 draft picks Cincinnati has made in the first three pounds over the last three years have been used on defenders, a strategy that I think will advance their defense all the way to average. So we’re kind of in a weird area here, where I’m down on the Bengals compared to where Bengals fans generally have them, but positive on them on the whole? Temper expectations, but don’t temper them too much? I don’t know; the Bengals are an odd team to judge this year.
I’ll take the over, combining my general cautious optimism with the 27th-ranked schedule in the league. That would require them doing better than 1-5 in the division, and the AFC North is always a grueling slog of a division to fight through. But there are enough games here against the bottom feeders of the AFC West and NFC East to provide fairly smooth sailing to a double-digit win season.
Cale: Oh man, yeah, this schedule is so easy, too. It’s as easy as a schedule gets in this conference, at least. Seriously, this is the one I wanted to break rank on. I think Zac Taylor has gotten away with a whole lot over the years just because he has an elite quarterback and had one of the best young receiving trios in the league. At some point, that has to come home to roost. But this schedule is just too easy, and the Bengals are just good enough. Last year’s crew nearly covered 10.5 with a replacement quarterback at the helm. This year’s team has an easier schedule and a better roster. Over.
Cleveland Browns (8.5)
Cale: Making a case for the on-paper Browns is so much easier than making a case for the real-life Browns. When you look at the depth chart laid out, when you delve into the stats, even when you peek at last year’s tape, the path gets drawn. Cleveland trotted out one of the best defenses of the DVOA era to not finish best in the league. The Browns get Nick Chubb back in the fold and added D’Onta Foreman to shore up a great running back room. Amari Cooper is a model of consistency, and if Jerry Jeudy was going to get a pop with any second team, it would come in a Ken Dorsey offense. Grinding the tape, there are moments you can talk yourself into Deshaun Watson coming back to his old self. There are throws where that zip and placement are just there. Cherry-pick the right stats and the right film clips, and you could convince a casual fan this was one of the AFC contenders in 2024.
Bryan: Making the playoffs in 2023 despite starting five different quarterbacks qualifies for minor miracle status, with Jim Schwartz’s defense being elevated to the status of a lesser deity in the greater Cleveland area. You would have to expect more continuity at the quarterback position in 2024, though whether that’s a plus or a minus after losing Comeback Player of the Year Joe Flacco remains a mystery.
That’s the Cleveland Browns story in a nutshell – will the offense be competent enough to let that defense drag them to victory? Because the defense sure lives up to its reputation. Whether they or the Steelers have the best set of pass rushers in the league is a battle I’ll leave to those respective fanbases, both of whom are willing to burn the other city to the ground in defense of Myles Garrett or T.J. Watt. I love locking up Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah for a long term deal, and adding Jordan Hicks and Devin Bush to go alongside him should make up for the loss of Anthony Walker. Juan Thornhilll, Grant Delpit, Denzel Ward and Greg Newsome are an extremely tough secondary to crack. Maybe the defense won’t be as good as last year just because of year-to-year variation and the general unpredictability of defense, but there’s a reason we project this defense to be the best in the league.
The question, then, is what can we expect out of the offense? Expecting Deshaun Watson to be anything like the quarterback they thought they were paying for seems to be a pipe dream at this point. While he obviously wasn’t helped by the shoulder injury he was nursing for most of the year, even a healthy Watson hasn’t been anywhere near the dynamic duel-threat weapon he was in Houston. Cleveland just has to hop they can get top-20 play out of him; it’s embarrassing enough that Baker Mayfield outshined him last year. And without Nick Chubb, even more pressure will be on Watson – Chubb seems to be a little ahead of schedule on his rehab after that devastating Week 2 knee injury from a year ago, but I still believe he’ll at least start the season on the PUP list, leaving Jerome Ford and Nyheim Hines to pick up a lot of the slack. I still love the Browns’ offensive line, and they have two very solid targets in Amari Cooper and David Njoku, but it feels like they’re still missing a playmaker they can lean on in clutch comments – who do you trust with the ball in their hands on third-and-4 with the game on the line? I don’t think they have an answer for that, and that worries me.
Cale: This offense will have to reckon with reality that it is shallow and inconsistent. Watson is the worst offender of that, ending the season with his best game in a Browns uniform, but Brian Hoyer and Mitchell Trubisky out-performed him in season-long DVOA. Forget Watson for a second. Jerome Ford had the third-highest number of runs go for 0 or negative yards at 56 attempts. Jeudy was fourth in DVOA on deep passes before Sean Payton came to town, then posted the worst total DVOA of his career last year. None of that even matters if Watson isn’t healthy. The $230-Million Man is coming off season-ending shoulder surgery and has yet to complete a season with the Browns. Who even knows what version of him we get next year.
Bryan: But then I come back to the defense, and how they’re able to shut teams down. If this is even an average offense, the Browns are at least Super Bowl contenders. And even if, like we project, the Browns are below average but not actively terrible, that should be enough to get over .500. It’s a cautious over for me, and I think they’re a clear step behind the top two teams in the division. But the Browns matchup with the best teams in the league in their areas of strength; it’s just a matter of how much they can smooth over their weaknesses.
Cale: Yeah, this defense is just too special to count out. Jim Schwartz put on a masterclass last year, and injuries were the only thing that could really slow it down. There are so few teams that can claim a top-five edge rusher, a top-10 linebacker, and a top-10 cornerback. No defense can boast the top-level talent Cleveland does while also rostering the sheer depth they also have. I’d be as bold as to venture that, if the Browns get some injury luck, they have the potential to put up one of the best defensive seasons in DVOA history. That’s how special this roster is.
I can’t help but give this team an over. I wrote in the Cleveland chapter of the Almanac that this was the most expensive version of being “a quarterback away” that a team has ever been in the NFL. It might also be one of the best rosters a “quarterback away” team has ever had. The late start for Chubb could hinder this team early, but the back end of this schedule is where Cleveland needs him anyway. This roster was good enough for Joe Flacco to look like he was 29 again, and it somehow improved this offseason. Watson just needs to play at a league-average level to take this team on a run.
Pittsburgh Steelers (8.5)
Bryan: There are 53 players on a team, but all I really want to do is point and laugh at a quarterback competition which has come down to Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Running an offense orchestrated by Arthur Smith. Is that so wrong of me? Should I be spending more time talking up the talent on the roster – the stud defensive trio of T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Cameron Highsmith? The promise of George Pickens? A running back room that I think is a little better than the jokes made at its expense, despite the strange usage patterns of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren? Should I be taking a more holistic view of Pittsburgh’s quality, backed by a head coach who, through thick and thin, has managed to avoid having a losing season in his 17 years in charge?
No. No I should not. Arthur Smith’s starting offense has yet to score a point in preseason, and while he says that we shouldn’t read too much into that and ‘preseason could distort reality’, the problem is that we’ve seen Smith’s offense in the regular season, as well. He may not be showing his full hand quite yet, but his full hand in Atlanta involved routing the ball away from his most talented players to make room for Jonnu Smith deep routes and Tyler Allgeier clutch-time carries. It’s good to have changeups in your repertoire, but at this point, Smith’s offense is 90% changeups. That can work when you have a creative quarterback to run your offense through, but, well…
In 2023, Russell Wilson was third in the league, taking 3.06 seconds to get rid of the ball. Tops on that list? Justin Fields at 3.23 seconds. We have a pair of quarterbacks who will hold the ball forever, and invite bad outcomes to happen because of it. Wilson has always taken too many sacks, but he’s been able to overcome that over the years through his athleticism and escapability, as well as one of the best deep balls in the league. He was willing to extend plays and occasionally take bad sacks because he trusted in his ability to make miracles happen. He’s no longer that player anymore. Perhaps Mr. Unlimited will adapt his playstyle to short passes over the middle and getting the ball out on time, areas where the Smith offense would like to attack. I just have a hard time believing the leopard can change its spots here. But at least Wilson has a track record of success; Fields has a wide collection of highlight reel plays masking down after down ineffectiveness – a sack-and-interception prone inaccurate passer who you can not rely on on a down-to-down basis. Either of these guys being your starting quarterback means it’s time to upgrade – but these are the upgrades over Kenny Pickett!
Cale: If I were going to push back on this, I would argue that this is a pretty well-balanced team. Two B-plus running backs, a solid tight end, promising wide receivers in George Pickens and Roman Wilson, and an offensive line that has potential upside but is undeniably young and thus far inconsistent. The defense is in the midst of trying to balance a long-term retooling while remaining competitive for the later years of Cameron Heyward and T.J. Watt. Are any of the non-Watt, non-Minkah Fitzpatrick pieces that exceptional? Not really, but the collective unit’s combined efforts will likely place this defense somewhere toward the median.
This is one of the most average teams in football. It’s what makes the Steelers such a toss-up. This really just comes down to the quarterback play. That’s what makes this such a problem. Russell Wilson just is not the guy anymore. His preseason efforts show it. I doubt he stays the starter for long, if he remains the starter at all. The other option isn’t much better, though. Justin Fields’ consistent improvements still leave him in the basement tier of quarterback play. Fields’ career-best adjusted sack rate is still north of 10 percent. He just cracked a positive CPOE for the first time in his career, and he is barely cracking completion percentages above 60 percent. His career-best -20.7% DVOA is still 30th in the league. I always thought that Arthur Smith would love a mobile quarterback to help this offense click. That bore out well in Fields’ preseason reps against the Bills, but it didn’t result in any trips to the end zone, either.
There is a definitive cap on what this offense can be with this quarterback and this offensive coordinator. The Steelers defense is mostly replacement-level players sans two elite talents. Tomlin’s magic has been worked on worse rosters, yes. There was always something clicking, though. A good run game. A surprise performance out of a veteran pick-up. A shocking game out of some milquetoast quarterback. If this team is going to shock the league, the method hasn’t revealed itself yet. There is too much randomness to be certain this team will over-perform.
Bryan: Under. All the way under. The streak ends here, Mike Tomlin. They might avoid double-digit losses, because I respect Tomlin’s ability to keep things from shattering far too much, but setting this line at 8.5 feels more like a meme based on Tomlin’s streak than an actual prediction for the 2024 Steelers.
Cale: I believe in the unstoppable force that is Mile Tomlin’s streak. But you’re right, Bryan, this streak has become a meme. It used to be one of the most impressive marks in the league for one of the game’s best active coaches. It’s still undeniably impressive, and it still shows the mark of a great coach. Now, though, it feels more like the football version of a Columbo episode. You know he’s going to figure this out. You just want to see what shocking twists and turns get made along the way.
I don’t think this is a responsible bet. I don’t think it makes sense in the context of every other bet on this list. The fact of the matter is, Mike Tomlin has finished with nine wins or better nine of the last 10 seasons. I don’t think that this is the worst roster Tomlin has had in that stretch. Plus, there is a chance a whole lot of offensive woes get rendered moot if Brandon Aiyuk ends up in black and yellow. Over, and it’s the least responsible one I’ve given thus far.
