Sport · The Record
Five panels in one Saints Wire roundup add to 37 of 38 picks for the Ravens; the Saints rank fourth in yards per game
Five panels itemized in one Friday roundup point almost entirely at Baltimore. The NFL's own game center and a Sept. 15 Covers preview read less certainly. The tally is this desk's, computed from the roundup's summary lines; no panel page was fetched.
New Orleans trailed Detroit 21-0, scored 30, and lost 31-30 in overtime. Its quarterback finished the weekend as the league's leading passer. A pick roundup published Friday by Saints Wire notes both and still reports that few NFL experts are picking New Orleans this week.
"You'll have a hard time finding many NFL experts who are picking the New Orleans Saints this week," the roundup begins, before crediting Baltimore's Week 1 result, which the roundup gives as a 41-23 win over Indianapolis under first-year head coach Jesse Minter. The piece appeared on Yahoo Sports at 9:04 p.m. UTC on Friday, Sept. 18, two days before kickoff. Its byline is printed at outlet level, with no individual writer named on the captured page. The speaker being tested here is the outlet.
What makes the roundup checkable is that it itemizes. ESPN's 11 analysts all took Baltimore. NFL.com's five-person panel was unanimous. So were Sports Illustrated's eight. Six USA TODAY experts went the same way, and on that one the roundup is relaying a count listed in the Ravens' official roundup rather than a poll of its own. NFL Network split seven to one. Those five lines add to 38 panel seats and 37 picks for Baltimore. The exception sits inside the NFL Network group, and the roundup neither names that analyst nor records who the analyst took.
Four further picks are listed by name, all pointing one way. Vinnie Iyer of The Sporting News made Baltimore 35-17 his lock of the week. CBS Sports' Jordan Dajani and Jared Dubin both predicted Ravens wins, with Pete Prisco at 33-20. Add them and one document carries 41 of 42 published picks for the home side. Saints Wire's summary of where the experts stand on Tyler Shough: "But they won't start backing him until he starts winning games."
Now the record, which is public, dated, and indifferent to who is fashionable.
The NFL's own game center for Saints at Ravens, Week 2, lists New Orleans at 0-1 and Baltimore at 1-0, kickoff Sunday at 5:00 p.m. ET at M&T Bank Stadium. Its team-stat block is where the consensus starts to look odd. Baltimore leads every line: 41 points per game to 30, ranked second against New Orleans in 11th; 506 yards per game to 469, second against fourth; 35:20 of possession to 31:35, fifth against 14th. The team that 41 of the roundup's 42 picks went against entered the week ranked fourth in the league in yards per game.
Two things that page does not settle, and both matter. Every rank on it rests on a single game, so fourth in yards per game means one Sunday's 469 yards set beside every other team's single Sunday. And the page counts production without counting circumstance. Setting the 21-0 deficit against the 56 attempts is this desk's reading, not the page's: much of that yardage came with New Orleans chasing the game.
The widest rank gap on the page is not on offense at all. It is turnover differential: Baltimore plus-one and eighth, New Orleans minus-two and 26th. If the panels have a statistical case rather than a narrative one, that row is where it lives, and no pick quoted in the roundup cites it.
View the data
| Value (yards) | |
|---|---|
| Tyler Shough, New Orleans | 410 yards |
| Jordan Love, Green Bay | 387 yards |
| Bryce Young, Carolina | 361 yards |
| Josh Allen, Buffalo | 334 yards |
| Lamar Jackson, Baltimore | 324 yards |
Source: The Big Lead (via Yahoo Sports): Surprising name headlines NFL passing leaders after Week 1 · Daily Pol graphic
That passing lead, mentioned once in the roundup and then set aside, is documented in the Saints' own game notes, which record that Shough "completed 35-of-56 passes for a career-high 410 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions, posting an 87.6 passer rating." The same notes place it inside franchise history: he "joins Drew Brees and Aaron Brooks as only the third Saint to throw for 400 yards," and his 325 passing yards after halftime and in overtime stand as a club best for a second half and overtime. C. Olave caught 10 passes for 182 yards, a career high, and his 300th career reception. On the other side, Lamar Jackson threw for 324 yards at 68 percent with a touchdown and no interceptions, and D. Henry carried 24 times for 144 yards and three scores.
The long run of the fixture sits on the Ravens' official matchup page, which states that "Baltimore is 6-2 all time against the Saints" and records a 27-13 win the last time the teams met, in 2022 at the Caesars Superdome.
The second record worth reading is a handicapping page, and its account of the market does not read like 37 of 38. A Covers.com preview of the game, updated Sept. 15 at 5:45 p.m. ET, argues that "the market is giving too much respect to the New Orleans Saints" and describes itself as "buying the Baltimore Ravens up to -9.5." Read literally, that is a ceiling: Covers' stated buy-point stops at 9.5 points, and the page's grievance is that bettors are treating New Orleans more generously than it thinks they should. A page telling bettors off for respecting the Saints is describing, on its own account, a market carrying more doubt than a near-unanimous panel does.
The Baltimore Banner's predictions page is in the evidence too, and the capture of it is a list of fragments with no byline. Two of them read "the Ravens' defense should be the best unit in this game" and "the Ravens' offensive firepower will be too much for them to overcome." A third reads "trickier than it appears," with nothing around it in the capture to say what it describes.
Analysis, on the cited numbers only: the panels and the Covers page are not disagreeing about who wins. Both favor Baltimore. They disagree about how certain anyone is entitled to be after one game each. A 37-of-38 show of hands reads as something close to a formality; a preview page complaining that the market overrates New Orleans is describing a market that on its own account still carries real doubt, because a market cannot be too generous to a team it has written off. Between those two positions sits a game center that has the team 41 of 42 picks went against fourth in the league in yards and 26th in the one column the pickers never mention, and a leaderboard that has its quarterback first in passing yards.
The gradable part, so this piece can be marked rather than admired: this desk's call is that New Orleans loses by fewer than 9.5 points or wins outright - Covers' stated buy-point, not a posted line, applied to the team those panels almost entirely passed over. That resolves Sunday evening and is settled by Sept. 21.
What a reader can check next is all on the clock. Kickoff is Sunday at 5:00 p.m. ET at M&T Bank Stadium. The game center that carries those ranks will carry the final. The Ravens' matchup page moves to 7-2 or to 6-3. And two names on the injury block decide how much of the above survives contact: Olave, listed with a hamstring but participating, and Baltimore's Z. Flowers, the same, while Tampa (knee), Wood (calf) and Stalbird (shoulder) did not practice.