Thursday Night Football: Greg Frank picks Titans vs Jaguars and assumes Jalen Ramsey is playing

Titans (-1.5) @ Jaguars (40)

Pick: Titans -1.5 and under 40

Short road favorites are often a red flag for me. More often than not, it feels like a trap, right? Home field is worth three points, so any team that is favored in an away game after those three points are built into the line is clearly the superior team, right? Then considering the spread is small enough to where a backdoor cover in junk time isn’t a consideration and you’re just picking the better team to win and often, said team will cover. Although, if you backed the Chargers and Bears with this same reasoning in Week 2, you would not have covered with either short road favorite and the Chargers lost outright in Detroit.

Having said all of that, I am on the Titans laying the short number to open Week 3 in the NFL. Cornerback Jalen Ramsey is probably the best player on the Jacksonville Jaguars. He’s been in the news for the wrong reasons this week after a sideline spat with coach Doug Marrone in Houston on Sunday and has been the subject of trade rumors since. With a short week and Ramsey still in Jacksonville heading into Thursday’s game, we’d expect the Jaguars to be a little unfocused. The Titans aren’t always a team worth trusting, but their defense is. Tennessee blanketed Baker Mayfield and the Browns in Week 1 and held the Colts to 288 yards last Sunday. The Titans have actually won nine games in three straight seasons which probably surprises a lot of people because of the way they do it. Nothing’s flashy about Mike Vrabel’s team, but he’s a defensive-minded coach who has a good unit on that side of the ball and a workhorse back in Derrick Henry who he can ride to victories in the fourth quarter. I think it’ll be that kind of game tonight and Tennessee wins somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-14. I’ll play the under in this one as well as the Jaguars have a workhorse back out of the SEC too in Leonard Fournette and would be wise to continue to keep backup quarterback Gardner Minshew under 35 passing attempts. Expect lots of punts in this one and the scoring drives will be long ones.

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