2024 Week 8: Ravens 24, Browns 29
The Browns played toe-to-toe with Baltimore, and all it took for Cleveland to play a good game of football was for Deshaun to get hurt, Amari Cooper to get traded, and install a new play-caller. With this win the Browns (2-6) put an end to a 5-game skid. If they can pull out a win against LAC Cleveland isn’t fully dead, but they simply aren’t good enough to have a .500 record.
This game was concerning for Baltimore (5-3). They are now a game behind Pittsburgh in the AFC North. The Baltimore team we WANT to and have seen could be undefeated, but the other Baltimore team we’ve seen could have the same (2-6) record as the Browns. They need to find that high-level consistency or they’ll never make it past KC in the playoffs.
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QB Report:
- Jameis Winston (27/41 for 334 yards, 3 TDs) is now the greatest QB in the league, and all it took was for him to get older. Winston, Flacco, Baker, and Geno – old QBs run the league. This is of course a joke. Any QB could come in against the Ravens defense and have one of the best games of their career… the Baltimore pass defense is that bad. The Browns have a tough stretch of pass defenses ahead of them, 5 of the next 6 are against either top-10 pass defenses or their BYE… with an easy game in Week 11 facing New Orleans.
RB Report:
- I have no update on Nick Chubb (16-52-0), he looks like himself. The Ravens have the best run defense in the league so of course his rushing tallies would be low. Chubb unfortunately has the same problem that Winston and the WRs will have, all of the defenses they play from now through Week 15 have top-10 run defenses, except for New Orleans.
WR Report:
- Diontae Johnson arrives in Baltimore for their Week 9 game which will shake up the receiving core in a few weeks, once DJ learns the playbook. Johnson is better than the current #2 Rashod Bateman (1-28-0/5) and this is a good football move, good for Lamar move, but bad for Zay Flowers (7-115-0/12). Flowers is likely a mid to high-end WR2 going forward.
- Every single receiving threat for the Browns had their best game of 2024, is it Baltimore’s defense to blame or is Cleveland entering a new era of passing dominance? Maybe Lasik-Jameis is going to be the one to lead Cleveland to the light.
- I loved Cedric Tillman (7-99-2/9) going into this matchup and he vindicated a lot of what I was thinking… what a massive game. Tillman looked like a true #1 and he could be for the rest of the season and possibly into next year, depending on what their offseason entails. A situation to monitor.
- Surprisingly, Elijah Moore (8-85-0/12) looked really good. Best game of his career, and this is from a film perspective. Moore has been a random-event slot his whole career, but with Winston, he might get some nice work going forward, especially against the stronger defenses ahead. Moore hadn’t topped 45 yards this year and had 85 against Baltimore.
- I’m inspired by the good game by the Cleveland offense, even thinking logically about it being the Ravens D, but then I see that Jerry Jeudy (5-79-0/8) joined in on the fun too and it really dampens my mood. Is Winston really so good that he made Jerry Jeudy a good WR, or is the Baltimore defense that bad? My heart wants the former, but my brain knows it's the latter. At the very least we can continue to attack the Ravens defense in Fantasy and betting props.
D/ST Report:
- How neither QB threw an INT in this game blows my mind… there were maybe 5 dropped picks, the worst one being Kyle Hamilton’s second dropped pick. I think he was so shocked by Jameis’ terrible throw that he couldn’t hang on. It looked like Jameis intended to throw him the ball and not the receiver.
image source: (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)