Week 9 of the NFL 2023 season starts out with the Thursday Night Football which sees us heading to Heinz Field as the Pittsburgh Steelers will go in search of a home win when they play host to the Tennessee Titans.
The Steelers will run out with a 4-3 record so far this season and will be looking in decent shape if they pick up the win here. Tennessee are 3-4 for their year and need to get winning soon if they are going to reel in the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC South.
Pittsburgh Steelers
The Pittsburgh Steelers were in a really good spot at 4-2 for the season heading into last week but then they were clipped by the Jacksonville Jaguars and will be looking to bounce back in this one. The key issue in that defeat last week was the exit of Kenny Pickett midway through the match with a rib injury. He has supposedly told his teammates that despite the short week he will be playing in this match but there is no way a rib issue completely recovers in four days so he’ll be playing banged up.
You could argue that this Pittsburgh offense has been banged up for too long. It has been one of the worst performing offenses of the season with a fully fit quarterback so you do wonder how it will go here. The other issue the Steelers face in this match is there will be no Minkah Fitzpatrick and there is a significant drop off in the overall performance of the defence when he doesn’t play. Opposing quarterbacks have less guessing to do while running backs get much more joy.
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Tennessee Titans
It looked as though the season of the Tennessee Titans was going nowhere but out of nowhere a rookie quarterback on debut guided them to a win which few saw coming against the Atlanta Falcons last week and if Will Levis can back up his fine opening display where he threw for four touchdowns and opened the field up then the Titans might fancy their chances of pulling off another surprise, this time on the road.
There is no guarantee that a rookie does back that performance up with another here but he might not need to because you would imagine on a short week that Derrick Henry will see a lot of the ball while DeAndre Hopkins looks like he is beginning to fire up which might take some of the heat off the trigger man. The Tennessee pass rush was in good working order last week as well and they could also keep their side in the game.
Betting
I’m not a massive fan of taking road teams on these short weeks but I do like the Tennessee Titans here. I probably wouldn’t have liked them as much if Kenny Pickett was fully fit but there seems to be no way that he will be and while he is a tough hombre I’m not convinced a quarterback who is less than 100% fit is the way to go. We’ll find out in this match where Will Levis is the real deal and this is the start of a new Titans era or not but at the prices the visitors feel a bit of a no brainer.
They have two of the best offensive talents in the game just showing signs of coming to the boil and if they ignite during this game then that would definitely be no bad thing for the Titans. The other thing which could sway this one in their favour is the absence of Minkah Fitzpatrick in the Steelers defence. If Derrick Henry in particular gets to take control of this game then it is for Tennessee to lose. Pittsburgh have only scored more than 17 points in one of their last four matches. I don’t think less than 17 gets it done here so I’ll play the Titans.
Tips
Back Tennessee Titans to beat Pittsburgh Steelers for a 3/10 stake at 2.40 with Coral
