NFL Week 3 Betting Picks: Lions vs Ravens Same Game Parlay

Week 3 comes to a close tonight, and we're wrapping things up with a correlated 3-leg parlay built around the Monday Night Football game. 

Leg 1: Baltimore Ravens ML -230 

This should be a great game and finale to the third week of the NFL season. I don’t want to mess around with the spread in this one, and while I think it will be a close contest I’ll side with the home team. Baltimore is a bit banged up on defense with no Nnamdi Madubuike and Kyle Van Noy. That may affect them being able to stop the run against a potent Lions rushing attack, but I like the Ravens offense to bounce-back in a softer spot than we saw against the Cleveland Browns. It’s been three weeks and the Browns grade out as essentially the best defense in football in quite a few metrics – we know that the Lions play a man-heavy defensive scheme and that could spell trouble against a mobile QB like Lamar Jackson. For what it’s worth, the last time the Lions traveled to Baltimore, the Ravens shredded them 38-6. I don’t see that happening again, and the Ravens have struggled to close game and hold onto leads – see Week 1 against the Bills – but I still like them to win a tight one tonight. 

 

Leg 2: Zay Flowers 50+ receiving yards -320

Correlating with the Ravens to win the game, I think we could see a truly monster performance from Zay Flowers tonight. I was all over Rome Odunze in that match-up against the Lions two weeks ago and I see a similar outcome for Flowers tonight — a fellow man-coverage beater. Flowers has had one of the most valuable roles in football through the first few weeks owning over 40% of the Ravens total targets. He’s also been elite and targeted heavily vs man-coverage in his career and I expect that trend to continue tonight. 

 

Leg 3: Sam Laporta 25+ receiving yards -520

If the Ravens are winning this game, which they often do early in games, that may force the Lions into a bit more of a pass-heavy script. Baltimore has operated a bit as a TE-funnel defense especially this season giving up over 170 yards to the position through two games. 

3 Leg parlay pays +126