NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/21)
Alex Christenson
The same game parlay of the day looks at tonight’s NFL matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the New Orleans Saints. This Monday Night Football game has a total of 46.5 with the visiting Ravens favored by 1 to 1.5 points, depending on the sportsbook. Both teams are suffering from multiple injuries to skill position players.
The Saints are without starting wide receiver Michael Thomas and running back Mark Ingram. Slot receiver Jarvis Landry is also unlikely to suit up here, so the funnel of touches is now very narrow in New Orleans. The Ravens will not have their top pass-catcher Mark Andrews, along with current No. 1 running back Gus Edwards. Their No. 1 wideout Rashod Bateman is also done for the season, so the Ravens will be without the top TE, WR, and top two RBs.
While this is bad news for both Ravens and Saints fans, it is not bad news for sports bettors. The fewer options each team has, the smaller the funnel of touches becomes. Knowing where the excess targets and carries are going to end up allows us to better position ourselves to profit off the changes. Here’s how I plan to do that with my same game parlay of the day.
DraftKings same game parlay of the day
Alvin Kamara Anytime Touchdown
Isaiah Likely Over 34.5 yards receiving
Kenyan Drake Anytime Touchdown
Making a same game parlay for the Saints and not including Alvin Kamara as an anytime TD scorer seems foolish right now. He carried the ball 18 times last week and caught nine passes on top of that for a massive 27 total touches. He had 18 touches the week before against Arizona, 25 vs. the Bengals and 29 vs. Seattle in the last four weeks. That’s 99 touches in the last four games or just shy of 25 per contest.
Regression snapped back to the mean last week, with Kamara finally finding the end zone. I say finally, because he had not scored a TD before exploding for three in last week’s game. In games without Mark Ingram, Kamara averages 0.95 TDs per contest vs. 0.84 with Ingram. He’s scored at least one TD in four of the last five games played without Ingram, and the one he missed scoring in, he had over 160 yards on 30+ touches, so the volume was there.
The Ravens are a tougher team to break down, because we have a lot of unknowns. What we do know is that J.K. Dobbins, Rashod Bateman and Mark Andrews are out. We know we will likely add Gus Edwards to that list. That leaves Kenyan Drake as the biggest beneficiary in the backfield, with Isaiah Likely the biggest beneficiary in the passing game, as he steps into that high usage TE role usually filled by Andrews.
Likely had a bit of a breakout last game, finishing with six catches for 77 yards and a TD. Likely averaged under three targets per game through Week 8. Last week, with Andrews not 100%, Likely saw seven targets, almost 3x his weekly average. He was averaging 10.4 yards per catch coming into last week, and that number is higher after his 6/77/1 performance. Expect him to be featured here with a lack of other options.
The last leg here is one that many may consider risky, but I actually prefer the TD prop to taking his yards or catches totals. Kenyan Drake has never been a great fill-in and probably will not be a workhorse back here, even without Edwards and Dobbins. But he scored last week when Edwards was banged up. Edwards was good to go in Week 8 and found the end zone twice. The week before Edwards was activated, Drake also found the end zone. The last two games Drake has played with Edwards out or limited, he found the end zone.
He doesn’t get massive volume, but today that may change. A team can only absorb so many injuries before the touch counts get out of whack, and the Ravens are beyond that point here. Not only do the injuries to Andrews and Bateman mean they may lean more heavily on the run game, but the injuries to Dobbins and Edwards also mean they have less players to lean on in that backfield. Drake has managed to find the end zone when given a bigger role, and currently his role is as big as it has been all season.
