New Orleans Saints (5-9) at Cleveland Browns (6-8)

The Saints have been among the most injury plagued teams in the league this season. They seemed to be getting healthier, with feature back Alvin Kamara (2 games missed), starting wide receivers Jarvis Landry (5 games missed) and Chris Olave (1 game missed), starting offensive linemen Andrus Peat (4 games missed) and James Hurst (1 game missed), stud edge defenders Cameron Jordan (1 game missed) and Marcus Davenport (2 games missed), starting safety Marcus Maye (4 games missed), talented linebacker Pete Werner (4 games missed), starting center Erik McCoy (4 games missed) all playing last week after missing significant time earlier in the season, but now they seem to be going in the opposite direction, with Werner, Olave, and Landry all out this week.

If the Saints were healthier, I would have had my eye on them as a potential bet this week, but without those three key players, it’s hard to be confident in them as 3-point road underdogs in Cleveland against the Browns. In fact, my calculated line is right at Cleveland -3, with my numbers saying the Browns actually have a slightly better chance to cover this spread than their opponents. With that in mind, I am going to take the Browns for pick ‘em purposes, but this is one of my lowest confidence picks of the week and a push is a good possibility, as the single most likely outcome of this game is the Browns winning by a field goal at home, with about 1 in 6 games decided by exactly a field goal.

Cleveland Browns 20 New Orleans Saints 17

Pick against the spread: Cleveland -3

Confidence: None