Depleted Ravens' Week 5 Odds Revealed

The Baltimore Ravens sustain as one of the toughest teams to project week-to-week heading forward.

They succumbed to their brutal start to the NFL's regular season in falling flat in all three games against other league contenders, and now sit at a pitiful 1-3 record through the first month of action without much hope of drastically improving. They were getting increasingly battered before the bottom fell out in last week's loss to their ever-victorious foils in the Kansas City Chiefs, who decisively won 37-20 in watching as the Ravens took a half-dozen more unnecessary hits to their already-thinning depth.

Schedule-makers took no mercy in the presumed returning contenders, but the Ravens get something of a break in Week 5 in a matchup against another disappointing squad in the Houston Texans. The young team is coming off of back-to-back playoff appearances and entered the fall as the de facto AFC South winners, but their scoring attack has failed to hold up in slumping out to their own 1-3 start.

Even in their presently-depleted state, ESPN's analysts remain afraid to bet against the Ravens and their raw firepower. All three of the site's guessers picked Baltimore to prevail in a low-scoring game for their standards, but that's a realistic, direct result of the mysterious status reports of numerous Ravens stars.

"The Ravens are 3-0 against Texans QB C.J. Stroud, holding him to an average of seven points per game," Jamison Hensley wrote. "But this is expected to be a much different Baltimore defense Sunday. The Ravens have six defensive starters dealing with injuries, including Pro Bowlers in SKyle Hamilton (groin), MLB Roquan Smith (hamstring) and CB Marlon Humphrey (calf). With all the new players filling in on defense, OLB Tavius Robinson said, 'It's just about doing a little extra in communication.'"

That's to say nothing of star quarterback Lamar Jackson, who missed a practice earlier this week in relation to the hamstring injury he suffered during the middle of that Chiefs blowout. Without him, expect a Ravens team running on pure fumes.

His teams have a positive recollection of the Texans, bagging arguably their most decisive win of their previous season in a 31-2 Christmas Day victory.