Jacksonville Jaguars (0-5) at Tennessee Titans (1-4)

This is a game where I don’t want to pick either side. On one hand, the Titans might not deserve to be favored by 6 points against anyone, especially with Charlie Whitehurst likely under center again. They are 1-4. They rank 29^th in rate of moving the chains differential, moving them at a 70.39% rate, as opposed to 76.80% for their opponents, a differential of 6.40%. They’re almost definitely going to finish 6-10 or worse and teams that finish that badly almost never cover as a favorite of 6 or more, doing so only about 25% of the time historically. It’s a powerful trend that can’t be used often because it refers to such rare cases and it’s tough to know how teams will finish, but it’s pretty clear that the Titans will not be going 6-5 to finish the season and finishing 7-9.

On the other hand, the Jaguars might be so bad that they’re the exception. They rank dead last in rate of moving the chains differential and not only that but their over 9 percentage points worse than Tennessee, as bad as they are. They move the chains at a 62.69% rate, as opposed to 78.41% for their opponents, meaning they are simultaneously one of the worst defenses and the worst offenses in the NFL and they have a differential of -15.72%. They have covered just 6 of their last 22 games, dating back to week 17 of 2012. Over those 22 games, they lost 15 of them by double digits. The Titans aren’t good, but I wouldn’t be shocked at all if they were able to pull out a double digit win here at home.

Going off of that, the Jaguars are projected to be 4 point home underdogs next week for the Browns. Not only is that the most the Browns have been favored by on the road since they rejoined the NFL in 1999, which again highlights how bad these Jaguars are, but teams tend to struggle before being big home underdogs. Teams are 49-77 ATS since 2012 before being home underdogs of three of more and 23-54 ATS in that same time period before being home underdogs of four or more. That’s because when you have a game coming up like that it generally means one of two things. One, you have a very tough, important game coming up. Two, you really aren’t that good of a football team. Here, it’s definitely the latter. The Jaguars are the side I’m going with, but I’m not confident in that at all.

Tennessee Titans 20 Jacksonville Jaguars 17

Pick against spread: Jacksonville +6

Confidence: None

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