Welcome to Monday Night Football
The entire AFC East is playing football today, with all three teams jockeying for some degree of post season rewards. The Baltimore Ravens are hosting the Cleveland Browns at 4:30 PM ET while the Cincinnati Bengals are visiting the Pittsburgh Steelers at 8:00 PM ET. Both games are being broadcast back-to-back on ESPN, ABC, and ESPN+.
As always in our brave new world of expansive sports gambling, it is now easier to bet on games than to watch them. You can catch current odds on all NFL games for Week 18 here on FanDuel.
This is going to be a fascinating day of football. The 11-5 Ravens are expected to easily handle the 3-13 Browns, but whether or not they do so with their starters on the field could affect how much of a shot the Browns have. In the unlikely event that the Ravens drop this game, the 10-6 Steelers have a shot at tying their record and entering a dizzying tie-break scenario to potentially snag the division title by defeating the 8-8 Bengals. The Bengals, for their part, still have an outside shot at making a wild card spot if they can top the Steelers (and the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins both lose tomorrow).
Even if the Ravens play their second string the whole game, I’m picking them to win. They will be facing what is left of the 2024 Browns led by quarterback Bailey Zappe. He will be the latest in an unflatteringly long line of quarterbacks for the Browns over the past 25 years.
AP source says Bailey Zappe will start at quarterback for the Browns on Saturday. He’ll be No. 40 since 1999.
— Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 2, 2025
As for the night game, I’m taking the Steelers. The Bengals are feisty, but they haven’t quite put it all together this year and Week 18 is a little bit late to manage that. The last AFC wildcard spot will be decided tomorrow after Denver and Miami play their games.
As always, use this space to talk about the action as it unfolds.
You know the drill.
This is now an open thread!