Thanksgiving Road Favorites and Week 12 AI Picks

Week 11 was better than average at 69% correct. We rode the game favorites much closer to our goal.

Week 12 is Thanksgiving weekend which is a weird time for football. Six teams have only 3 days to prepare for highly televised primetime games and two teams get a strange 4-day window for the new Black Friday game. This post got me thinking that maybe these games are statistically unique as a result.

I used one website to find all the games from Thanksgiving day over the past decade and I used a second site to determine who was the betting favorite in those games.

 

Favorites pull their weight on Turkey Day

In the past 10 years there have been 29 games on Thanksgiving (2020 only had 2 games). In that span the favorite has won 22 of the 29 games (76%). To break down a bit further, road favorites have won 11 of 11 (100%), and home favorites have won 11 of 18 (61%).

The 7 underdogs to pull off a win have all been road teams. No home underdogs have won in 10 years.

It’s important to look at divisional games separately since they are much more intense. 19 of 29 Thanksgiving games have been divisional matchups. Home Favorites have won 9 (47%), Road Favorites have won 5 (26%), and Road Underdogs have won 5 (26%). Again, no home underdogs have won.

If we take all this info and apply it to this week, we get: 3 divisional games, 2 home favorites, and 1 road favorite.

Green Bay at Detroit

Detroit is favored by 7.5 at home against a divisional foe.

Green Bay did look competent last week against a confusing Chargers team, but that win came with the loss of Aaron Jones and Luke Musgrave. Their backups are banged up as well. With decreased offensive output, the chances look slim.

Detroit is quite healthy for this time of year, and they need to put as much space between themselves and Minnesota as possible before they square off in the final weeks.

All signs point to the home favorite – Detroit hanging on for a victory (61%) and possibly covering.

Washington at Dallas

Dallas is favored at home by 12.5.

Washington had a rough week against NY Giants with 6 turnovers. By all other metrics they were decent. This week, playing indoors will limit the impact of weather and should reduce the number of drives killed by a lost ball.

Dallas has been rolling to huge wins, but they keep crushing bad teams. Are we really going to get excited about beating Carolina?
While Dallas is very likely to win (61%) as the home favorite, the spread seems like an overreaction to last week’s extremes.

San Francisco at Seattle

San Francisco is now favored by 7 as they walk into Lumen Field. They started out as -4 before the news of injuries broke.

San Francisco appears to have gotten back on track by rolling Jacksonville and Tampa Bay, but that three game stretch showed that the god-king bleeds like everyone else (yeah that’s a Xerxes reference from 300).

Seattle is, to put it lightly, “streaky”. They suffer crushing defeats, then respond by sneaking out a win against teams they shouldn’t really hang with. They lost to the LA Rams twice, Cincinnati when they were peak health, and were blown out by Baltimore – all teams with strong strength of schedule (Crabtree Points). Now Seattle enters a brutal stretch against San Francisco twice, Dallas, and Philadelphia. They need to win one with San Francisco to stay in Wild Card control.

Unfortunately, the road favorite is king in this situation (100%). San Francisco has all the numbers in their favor to walk away with a win.

Miami at NY Jets

A weird Friday night game leads with Miami as the road favorite at -10. 

 

Miami can score points while NYJ keeps the score low on both sides of the ball. The one saving grace is the new starting QB Mike Doyle might mix things up enough to elude Miami’s defense and maybe steal some points.

 

Fortunately, the weather looks warm enough for Tua to function, so Miami looks solid as a road favorite (100%).

The Picks

Detroit over Green Bay
Dallas over Washington
San Francisco over Seattle
Miami over NY Jets
New Orleans over Atlanta
Pittsburgh over Cincinnati
Carolina over Tennessee
Indianapolis over Tampa Bay
New England over NY Giants
Jacksonville over Houston
Denver over Cleveland
LA Rams over Arizona
Kansas City over Las Vegas – close!
Philadelphia over Buffalo
Baltimore over LA Chargers
Minnesota over Chicago