Monday Night Football Betting: Ben Roethlisberger's Final Game at Heinz Field
This season’s final Monday Night matchup was going to be billed as a “win or go home” as both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns had a realistic shot at the playoffs with a loss tonight eliminating either team.
The Cincinnati Bengals’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs gave the Bengals the AFC North crown, and the Los Angeles Chargers’ win over the Denver Broncos eliminated Cleveland from playoff contention.
The Steelers still have the slimmest of playoff hopes that require beating Cleveland tonight and the Baltimore Ravens on the road next week while needing the Jacksonville Jaguars to take down the Indianapolis Colts and the Las Vegas Raiders or Los Angeles Chargers not to tie. So you’re saying there’s a chance?
Even if there isn't much playoff intrigue to this game from a playoffs standpoint, it seems that this will be Ben Roethlisberger's final home game of his career. It'll be interesting to see if Roethlisberger can once again take down a team he has a dominant record over or if the Browns can finish his career at Heinz Field like they did last year.
Here is how numberFire ranks each team heading into tonight’s game using our nERD metric and Net Expected Points (NEP).
| Team | nERD | nERD Rank | Off NEP Rank | Def NEP Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Browns | -1.22 | 18 | 20 | 18 |
| Pittsburgh Steelers | -2.85 | 21 | 25 | 14 |
Inside the Standard Bets
The opening line favored Cleveland by three points and stayed there until Sunday evening when the Browns were officially eliminated from playoff contention. With the Steelers’ playoff hopes on life support the line changed dramatically.
Online Sportsbook has the Steelers as 2.5-point favorites, and our model sees this basically as a coin-flip game while giving the slightest edge to the Browns, having them winning outright 51.67% of the time.
Getting plus-odds (+128, with implied probability of 43.86%) here makes the Browns' moneyline a two-star wager and the best value of the standard bets.
The odds for Cleveland covering are set at -105 (51.22% implied), and with our model giving that a 53.23% chance of that happening, this is a one-star bet and not quite the value of taking the Browns straight up.
Our model gives a 3.36% chance of a push on the 43 total points and the over and under being less than 50% likely. Negative odds (and this less-than-50% implied probability) mean to move on from these wagers.
Player Prop Value Bets
Steelers wide receiver Chase Claypool has been a bit of a matchup problem for Cleveland since he entered the league last season. In four games (three regular season, and last year’s playoff matchup) he has averaged 69.75 receiving yards per game with a minimum of 45 yards.
His receiving yardage line is 40.5, so I like taking the over (-110) on Chase putting up some decent numbers. Our player projection model likes the over here, too, as that has his median receiving output projection at 44.95 yards.
Cleveland’s offense has been much more productive in the first half of games this season, particularly on the road where they have averaged 14.1 points before halftime. Pittsburgh has been bad here, averaging 6.7 points in their last three opening 30-minutes (this average drops to 1 point over their last three games).
I see the best value in taking Cleveland to win the first half in a three-way wager (either team winning or a tie) at +130 (43.48% implied).
Final Notes
The Steelers are 6-9 against the spread this season and 3-5 at home while Cleveland is 7-8 against the spread overall and 4-3 on the road.
The under has hit in six of Pittsburgh’s eight home games.
Pittsburgh is 3-0 against the spread against Cleveland over the last three regular season games (they did not cover in last year’s playoff loss to the Browns).
