Intro by Yank
Welcome one and all to one of the best days of the year. Sam and I are honored and humbled to once again partake in a great American tradition; gambling on all three Thanksgiving day games and thus have a reason to summarily ignore your families. Will the quality of the football be high? Well, there is a good chance Tim Boyle, Cedrick Wilson, and Trevor Simiean all play a meaningful role. Will the picks win you any money? Well, Sam and I are making the picks. But most importantly will you have fun? Realistically probably not, but Thanksgiving isn’t about fun it’s about overeating, over-drinking, and probably losing money because the Lions do something stupid. Onto the picks!
The Strategies
- Watch line movement carefully. Sharps move the lines and we want to be on the side with them.
- Pick more underdogs. Even though many of them lose more than 50% of games, they still cover about 50% of the time.
- Put in bets earlier. Once you get to Sunday, the lines are close to perfectly efficient.
Thanksgiving Day Picks
The Chicago Bears-3 @ the Detroit Lions
Yank: Continuing another Thanksgiving tradition, we start with the worst game of the day. But I will be in Central Time where this game starts at 11:30! Football! At eleven-thirty! What a holiday. Meanwhile, on the actual gridiron we are going to get Andy “Mashed Potatoes” Dalton against either Jared “Cranberry Sauce” Goff, or worse Tim “Burnt Biscuits” Boyle. Luckily in games like this, I don’t use my questionable intuition to pick which of those options is worse, I trust the line movement. This game opened as Bears-4 and has moved a full point towards the Lions. This is also the time of the year where I like to take advantage of home dogs in division games and as much as I hate to admit it the Lions fit the bill here. Let’s hope play-caller Dan Campbell dials up a heaping helping of D’Andre Swift and the Lions feast on Matt Nagy’s dead carcass.
Sam: I had to go the other way on this one. Similar to my reaction to Yank’s take that mashed potatoes aren’t good, I have to disagree with his bet. Mashed potatoes are delicious and the Lions simply aren’t good. Yank shared with me earlier this week how Tim Boyle has never been successful at any level of football and it’s not going to start today, no matter how many times he gets the bigger piece of the wishbone. While I was originally on board with the opinion that the Bears might be dead and they’ve all quit on Nagy, but they are professionals and they don’t like losing to bad players. It’s embarrassing. The Bears should have enough firepower to cook the Lions’ turkey to perfection.
Yank’s Play: $5.00 on the Lions ML (+145)
Sam’s Play: $4.40 on the Bears-3 (-110)
The Las Vegas Raiders @ the Dallas Cowboys-7.5
Sam: Just like that questionable new recipe your family wants to add to the staples for your Thanksgiving feast, picking the Raiders could really feel like a major disaster or a new tradition – one that Yank and I have been trying out all season. We like the Raiders to be this week’s tease killer. The Raiders have really been struggling lately. They’ve lost their coach and a top WR to separate scandals. Carr looks lifeless at times. It’s a mess. And yet, the Cowboys are missing their two best WR’s and two starting DE’s. Dak has really struggled at times without his full arsenal. Yank and I have tried to find the tease killer every week, this is our latest attempt to find the right amount to eat without needing a nap.
Yank: I don’t have a super robust rationale for this one. Most bettors love the Cowboys because it seems like the Raiders are dead. This is one of the only tease-able games of the weekend as Sam points out. It all seems way too easy. This Cowboys team is by no means infallible. They got killed by the Broncos way too recently for my taste. The Raiders aren’t great but if they get hot they are dangerous. I’ll take them to kill a bunch of people‘s teases the way that an overcooked turkey kills many folk’s Thanksgiving meals.
Yank’s Play: $4.00 on the Raiders ML (+290)
Sam’s Play: $2.50 on the Raiders+7.5 (-115) and $4.00 on the Raiders ML (+270)
The Buffalo Bills-6.5 @ the New Orleans Saints
Sam: The Bills have really been struggling as of late. They have had a weak schedule and it might be finally catching up to them. Nevertheless, they get the reeling Saints who barely managed to find enough scraps at the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning to put together a full meal (roster) for the family. We would have really liked the Saints in this spot 2 weeks ago, but we’re trying to learn our lessons. The Saints missed 7 starters on offense last week, and while the starting rosters for most teams are pretty even talent-wise (a principle of ours), there is a drop-off once you start getting to roster spots 50, 51, and 52. Even at full-strength, the best thing the Saints do is stop the run and the Bills could care less about their running game. We expect the Bills to carve the Saints secondary up like Dad carving out all of the turkey meat still left on the bird at the end of the night.
Yank: Sam has it covered here. Sometimes it’s as easy as “who is available?” This is the Saints injury report:
Bills by 90. Happy Thanksgiving!
Yank’s Play: $5.00 on the Bills-5.5 (+112)
Sam’s Play: $5.50 on the Bills-6 (-110)
Thanksgiving performances:
| Sam | Yank | |
| Against the Spread: | 1-1 | 0-1 |
| Moneyline: | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| Over/Unders: | 0-0 | 0-1 |
| Props: | 0-0 | 0-0 |
| Total: | 1-1 | 0-2 |
| Money: | -$11.15 | -$1.55 |
Authors: Sam Mattson and Michael Yanckello
One Last Line 