Minnesota Vikings (3-4) at Baltimore Ravens (5-2)

The Ravens have to follow up this game with a short week and a Thursday Night Football matchup, which usually isn’t good news for a favorite’s chance of covering the spread, as favorites have covered at just a 41.8% rate all-time before Thursday Night Football. However, the Ravens are only facing the lowly Dolphins, so next week’s game probably won’t be a huge distraction and, more importantly, the Ravens should also be completely well rested, not just coming off of a bye, but somehow in their fourth straight home game. Including the bye week, the Ravens haven’t had to travel for a game since their week 4 trip to Denver. 

There isn’t much data on teams in their fourth straight home game and even less so on teams in their fourth straight home game coming off of a bye, or with a bye at some point during the homestand, but teams in their third straight home game cover at a 54.9% rate and it stands to reason that trend would extend to the fourth straight. For the record, teams are 6-3 ATS over the past 30 seasons in their fourth straight home game, which is a small sample size, but it adds further evidence that this should be a good spot for the Ravens.

We’re also getting a little bit of line value with the Ravens at -6, as my calculated line has them as 7-point favorites. The Vikings have played better than their 3-4 record and haven’t lost by more than one score, but they just lost probably their best defensive player Danielle Hunter for the season, which hurts their outlook significantly going forward, and the Ravens are one of the better teams in the league, so they could easily hand them their first multi-score loss. There isn’t enough here to be confident betting the Ravens, but they should be the right side for pick ‘em purposes.

Baltimore Ravens 35 Minnesota Vikings 27

Pick against the spread: Baltimore -6

Confidence: Low