Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to Week 12 of the 2018 NFL season! The San Francisco 49ers travel to face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this Sunday, but in the meantime, we have a triple-header of football later today to get us through the holiday. We get three rivalry games, with the Lions hosting the Bears on CBS, the Cowboys hosting Washington on FOX, and the Saints hosting the Falcons on NBC.
The Thanksgiving triple-header gets started at 9:30 a.m. PT with the Lions hosting the Bears as a field goal underdog. If you can get a field goal or less, I think you have to take the Bears, even with Mitchell Trubisky a question mark. That defense could do some serious damage to Matthew Stafford & Co.
At 1:30 p.m. the Dallas Cowboys host Washington as a touchdown favorite. Washington lost Alex Smith to a compound leg fracture on Sunday, and sends out Colt McCoy in his place. Dallas is starting to roll, with two wins in three weeks since adding Amari Cooper at the trade deadline. I don’t think McCoy will be a huge downgrade in an offense that will focus on feeding Adrian Peterson, so I am going to take the points with Washington.
Thanksgiving wraps up with the Saints hosting the Falcons as a 13-point favorite. This is actually the largest spread in this rivalry since at least 1991, according to the OddsShark database. I could easily see New Orleans crushing Atlanta, but in a rivalry game on a short week, I’m inclined to take the points with the Falcons. Pray for me.
If you’re still alive in your Survivor pool, you are likely staying away from 49ers-Bucs. I think the 49ers have a good shot of beating the Bucs, particularly with the extra time for Kyle Shanahan to get a gameplan together for Nick Mullens. That being said, I would steer clear of them given the Bucs offensive firepower and the 49ers defensive inconsistency. I imagine quite a few people might take New Orleans as a near two touchdown favorite over Atlanta. The Chargers over the Cardinals is a solid value pick, as is Baltimore over Oakland.
Here are all my straight-up picks for Week 12. I was 5-8 last week, bringing my season record to 102-56-2. I’ll have the rest of my picks against the spread later this weekend.
Bears @ Lions: Bears
Washington @ Cowboys: Cowboys
Falcons @ Saints: Saints
Jaguars @ Bills: Jaguars
Browns @ Bengals: Bengals
Patriots @ Jets: Patriots
Giants @ Eagles: Eagles
49ers @ Buccaneers: 49ers
Seahawks @ Panthers: Panthers
Raiders @ Ravens: Ravens
Cardinals @ Chargers: Chargers
Steelers @ Broncos: Steelers
Dolphins @ Colts: Colts
Packers @ Vikings: Packers
Titans @ Texans: Texans