Titans Colts Line

Written by Steve Janus

The Tennessee Titans will go on the road to face the Indianapolis Colts in a must win game if they want to keep their playoff hopes alive. The Titans dropped to 7-6 with a heartbreaking 22-17 loss at home to New Orleans on Sunday. They are now tied with Oakland and Cincinnati, and are a full game back of the Jets for the final Wild Card spot. The Colts fell 10-24 at Baltimore in week 14, leaving them just three games to avoid going 0-16. The Titans beat the Colts 27-10 at home back in week 8.

Taking a look at the week 15 NFL lines, oddsmakers currently have the Titans favored by 6.5-points over the Colts with the total set at 41 points.

Tennessee Titans:

Despite losing starting quarterback Matt Hasselbeck early in the second quarter, the Titans had their chance to pull off a stunning upset late in the game. Rookie quarterback Jake Locker hit Nate Washington on a 40-yard touchdown pass to make it 17-22 with just under 6 minutes to play. Locker would march the Titans to the New Orleans 5-yard line with just seconds remaining, but threw an incomplete pass and was sacked to end the game.

Its uncertain whether or not Hasselbeck will be able to return to action this week. The Titans have said Hasselbeck will play if he capable of taking the field, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he missed at least this game. I have been impressed with what Locker has done in limited action. He completed just 13 of 29 attempts, but threw for 282 yards. Either way the Titans should be able to move the ball against the Colts 21st ranked pass defense.

The injury to Hasselbeck and how close this game ended up being took a lot of attention off another dismal performance from running back Chris Johnson. After rushing for 243 yards and two touchdowns in his previous two games, Johnson was held to just 23 yards on 11 attempts. At this point you just don’t know what you are going to get from Johnson. He had just 34 yards on 14 attempts in the first meeting against the Colts.

Indianapolis Colts:

If the Colts don’t find a way to beat the Titans on Sunday, that will leave them with a home game against Houston and a road game at Jacksonville to avoid matching the Lions’ 0-16 finish from 2008. While the Colts keep losing, they have covered the spread in each of their last two games. However, they were extremely lucky to beat the 16-point spread against the Ravens, as they scored a touchdown on the very last play of the game to make it 10-24.

Offensively the Colts could do very little against the Ravens defense. New starting quarterback Dan Orlovsky went just 17 of 37 for 136 yards, while Dominic Brown and Joseph Addai combined for only 44 yards on 11 carries. They come in averaging just 14 ppg, but have been held to 10 points or less in five of their last seven.

While the Titans played a great defensive game last week against the Saints, they had their struggles keeping the Colts offense in check the first time around. Curtis Painter threw for 250 yards and the Colts ground game piled on a season-high 158 yards on 26 attempts. However, 79 of those rushing yards came from Painter scrambling from the the pocket.

Betting Trends:

Tennessee is 10-1 ATS vs. terrible ball control teams, <28 minutes TOP, <=16 FD’s per game after 8+ games since 1992.

Indianapolis is 0-6 ATS after a loss by 14 or more points over the last 2 seasons.

Be sure to stop back and check out who Steve Janus has picked to win this week in the NFL.

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