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The Baltimore Ravens are about four-point favorites on the road against the St. Louis Rams at 4:05 PM Eastern on Sunday, with most experts likewise picking the Ravens to go to 2-1. After crushing the Steelers in Week 1, the Ravens are coming off a humbling defeat against the Titans in Week 2. The Rams, meanwhile, are 0-2, coming off losses against the Eagles and Giants. Here's a sampling of experts' picks.
Peter King has the Ravens winning, 20-12:
You know why the Ravens need this game quite a bit? Because they have to prove to their fans and themselves that the resounding Steeler victory in Week 1 didn't take so much out of them for the rest of the year. Oh, and it would help if their corners could cover the way did in Week 1 too.
SB Nation St. Louis has been most objective about the game, picking the Rams to win by 24 points, all while playing a blazing drum solo in 13/8 time, or something:
Fumbling punts and muffing laterals and dropping passes, those are all pretty bad things, but in the grand scheme of the Ramsika Epic it's not nearly as important as the way Sam Bradford's command of Josh McDaniels's offense looked almost unstoppable sometimes, which is why the tempo gets really fast in the middle of this one until the guy dressed up as Neil Peart pretends to get a leg cramp and falls down and they have to stop the song.
(It's a prog-rock-themed picks post, which certainly is fun enough to outweigh any objectivity issues.)
SB Nation Pittsburgh thinks the Ravens should be able to overcome the Rams' home-field advantage:
The Rams are just too beat up to be as effective as we thought they would be at the start of the year. More importantly, though, the Ravens are a veteran team that will be able to handle the crowd noise and hostile confines of playing on the road in St. Louis.
All of ESPN's commentators have picked the Ravens, as do all of Yahoo!'s.
For more on the Rams, be sure to check out Turf Show Times, which has an interview with SB Nation's Ravens blog, Baltimore Beat Down.