Buffalo Bills at Cleveland Browns
Saturday, August 22, 2026
1:00 PM ET, Huntington Bank Field
Saturday’s early afternoon game in Cleveland has one of the most aggressive Under moves on the entire Week 2 preseason board, and the situational factors backing it up are as clean as they come.
The Browns are 3-point home favorites with a total of 36.5. This game opened with Cleveland as a 1.5-point favorite and a total of 39.5. Since then, the spread has moved a point and a half toward the Browns, and the total has dropped a full three points to 36.5. When a preseason total drops three points from open to game day, sharp money is telling you something specific about how these two teams are going to approach this game. In this case, the situational read matches the market movement perfectly.
Let’s start with the joint practice.
The Bills and Browns are holding a joint practice at Cleveland’s facility in Berea, Ohio on Thursday, August 20 — two days before Saturday’s game. Both head coaches have confirmed the joint practice will feature their top players. Todd Monken specifically noted that if his coaching staff sees what they want to see from the starters in Thursday’s practice, then he can be comfortable running out mostly backups on Saturday. Joe Brady is expected to take a similar approach. When two teams practice together in the days before a preseason game with both top units participating, the veteran starters typically get their real competitive work done in the practice sessions rather than in the actual game.
That’s the exact profile that leads to Under-heavy scoring on Saturday.
Now the head coaching setup is another factor pushing the Under.
Both Joe Brady and Todd Monken are in their first year as NFL head coaches. Brady is the former Bills offensive coordinator who was promoted after Sean McDermott was fired. Monken was hired by Cleveland on January 28, 2026 after coming over from Baltimore where he’d been the offensive coordinator under John Harbaugh from 2023-2025. Both coaches are still installing their systems, evaluating rosters, and figuring out their approach. First-year head coaches in their preseason opener with a new team typically run vanilla playcalling — base concepts to see how young players execute rather than complex scheming designed to score points.
Two vanilla offenses running backups after joint practice reps is a formula for punts, three-and-outs, and stalled drives.
The quarterback situation on both sides confirms the read.
Josh Allen is Buffalo’s starting quarterback, but with an established veteran roster and no reason to expose him to injury risk in preseason, Allen is unlikely to see more than a handful of snaps. That leaves Buffalo’s offense in the hands of backup quarterbacks fighting for depth roster spots against a Cleveland defense that generated multiple takeaways during last week’s preseason opener against the Bears.
Cleveland’s QB situation is different but just as unlikely to produce points. Shedeur Sanders will start Saturday’s game and take reps with the first team during Thursday’s joint practice as well. Deshaun Watson, still competing for the starting job, will get his opportunity later. Sanders played the third quarter against the Bears in Week 1 and struggled with rhythm. This is his first start at the professional level, and he’s going against a Bills defense that even at the backup level has been well-coached under Brady’s staff.
The Week 1 data is interesting because both games actually went Over — Bills 29, Panthers 14 for 43 combined, and Browns 10, Bears 34 for 44 combined. But those were preseason openers where both teams played their starters for a longer stretch than normal. This is Week 2 with a joint practice buffer, and the dynamics change completely. The market has already adjusted the total down three points to reflect that reality.
Cleveland’s 2025 offensive numbers were historically bad — their 61.9% catch rate was the lowest in the entire NFL. Sanders and Watson are trying to fix that, but preseason games with backup-heavy rotations rarely produce clean, sustained drives. Meanwhile, Buffalo’s offense is built around Josh Allen and their league-leading rushing attack (30 rushing touchdowns in 2025, most in the NFL) — none of which is going to be featured Saturday.
I looked at the side too. Browns -3 at home with Sanders starting has some legitimate reasoning behind it, but preseason spreads that big can flip on any garbage-time possession. The total is the cleaner signal, and the massive drop from 39.5 to 36.5 tells you the market has settled on the right side.
The Pick: Bills/Browns Under 36.5
