Welcome to the best sports holiday of the year, where we get to stuff our face with food and our eyes with football for nine-plus hours. That's right, it's turducken time. By now, you have a plan for your Thanksgiving feast (I hope), but have you made your plan for betting football?
Two trends are going head-to-head with our three-game Thanksgiving slate of Bears at Lions, Redskins at Cowboys and Falcons at Saints, all of which you can stream at fuboTV (Try for free): playing the favorite on Thursday, a trend that's at worst 8-2-1 in 2018; and playing the road team on Thanksgiving, a trend that's 14-7 ATS since 2011.
Let's start with the 2018 Thursday favorites trend. The closing favorite is 8-2-1 against the spread on Thursday night this season, but that record has some extenuating circumstances, and someone who has bet only the favorites could actually be 10-0-1. The push was this past week, but the Seahawks were available at -2.5 for much of the week, so anyone who laid the points before Thursday likely cashed. One loss was in Week 4, where the Rams closed -7.5 against the Vikings and won by seven, but the line was Rams -7 most of the week there, so you could have easily pushed backing the Rams. And the other loss was by the Raiders, who closed as 1.5-point road favorites after it was announced C.J. Beathard was out for the 49ers in Week 9. But anyone who played the 49ers before that announcement likely laid three points or less and cashed.
So if you believe in that 2018 trend, you should be laying the points with the Saints, Cowboys and whoever closes as the favorite in Bears-Lions (Chicago if Mitchell Trubisky plays, likely Detroit if Chase Daniel starts for the Bears).
But another powerful trend has been backing the road teams on Thanksgiving. For seven straight seasons, two of the three road teams playing on Thanksgiving have covered, giving a bettor a nice 14-7 record if all he or she did was take whichever team was away from home on the holiday. Last year all three favorites covered, with two of them doing so on the road, but there have been seasons (2013, '14, '15) during that stretch where the home team was favored in all three games and covered only one.
Is there sense in that trend? If you buy into it, you're probably thinking that the spread is baking too much of advantage into the line for the home team, overvaluing the effect of the short week on the team that has to travel. Or you're theorizing that it's better to be the road team on Thanksgiving, since you're fully focused on the game and not having to deal with planning for dinner at home around it.
If you think road teams are going 2-1 ATS again for the eighth straight year, it makes sense to bet all of the Bears, Redskins and Falcons and take your expected profit home.
If you want to know which sides I like this week, you can find that info at the SportsLine link below, where all my rated plays appear during the season along with my five SuperContest picks each week and plenty of great analysis from a fantastic collection of experts. You can also check out where all our CBS Sports staff lands on each game each week right here.
Each week in this space, I'm going to go behind the lines and picks to bring you a bit of a deeper dive into what you should know before locking in your plays. Let's get to it.
My picks
Over at SportsLine, I'm 14-5-1 on my last 20 picks against the spread, and I'll be posting my picks for the Thanksgiving slate and the rest of Week 12 throughout the next few days. Join now and use promo code WHITE for $1 on your first month and you can get mine and every SportsLine expert's picks throughout the year, as well as my SuperContest picks each Saturday.
However, you can get one free pick with my teaser of the week at the end of this article. Enjoy!
Bears (-3) at Lions
Home-field advantage: 3 points
Power rating line: Bears -3.5
Lookahead line: Bears -3.5
| CHI | DET | |
|---|---|---|
| Record vs. spread | 7-3 | 6-4 |
| Yards per play differential | 0.8 | -0.9 |
| Points per drive offense rank | 10 | 16 |
| Points per drive defense rank | 1 | 28 |
| Weighted DVOA | 24.0 | -22.5 |
| Pass offense DVOA rank | 11 | 21 |
| Pass defense DVOA rank | 3 | 31 |
| Run offense DVOA rank | 10 | 20 |
| Run defense DVOA rank | 1 | 23 |
The big news in this game is that Mitchell Trubisky may not be able to play for the Bears due to a shoulder injury that kept him out of practice on Tuesday. The early buzz caused the line to move down a point from Bears -4 on Tuesday, and if he's ruled out, we could see it swing to the Lions being favored on the closing number.
And that would be a mistake. Trubisky has played well this year, but the biggest reason the Bears have an offense ranked 12th by DVOA and 10th by points per drive isn't the quarterback, but the head coach. Matt Nagy has put his second-year passer in the best position to succeed through scheme and play-calling, and it's reasonable to assume he'd do the same if Chase Daniel were pressed into starting duty.
And Daniel is no inexperienced youngster; despite only throwing 78 regular-season passes, he's been in the league nine years, three of them with Nagy as his quarterbacks coach in Kansas City. My power rating line has this game at Bears -3.5 if Trubisky plays, but I'm only moving them down two points if it's Daniel under center, and I'd still give them better than a 50 percent chance to win the game. So if you want to give me points, I'll take 'em.
The Lions have been a streaky team on Thanksgiving. Before losing by seven points as 2.5-point 'dogs last year, they had covered five straight years. But before you run out and bet it all on the Lions, that covering stretch was preceded by eight straight losses against the spread on Thanksgiving.
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Redskins at Cowboys (-7.5)
Home-field advantage: 2 points
Power rating line: Cowboys -6
Lookahead line: Cowboys -4.5
| WAS | DAL | |
|---|---|---|
| Record vs. spread | 7-3 | 5-5 |
| Yards per play differential | -0.6 | 0.0 |
| Points per drive offense rank | 24 | 18 |
| Points per drive defense rank | 7 | 5 |
| Weighted DVOA | -4.7 | -13.5 |
| Pass offense DVOA rank | 25 | 26 |
| Pass defense DVOA rank | 8 | 26 |
| Run offense DVOA rank | 13 | 12 |
| Run defense DVOA rank | 28 | 7 |
It's Thanksgiving, which means you can set your schedule for 4:30 p.m. ET so you can watch the Cowboys not cover a football game. Despite being the home team year in and year out, the Cowboys haven't covered on Thanksgiving since 2010. They've won three times during that stretch, but each and every time the game stayed within the number.
Could that change this year? The lookahead line shows about what you could have expected had Alex Smith not suffered a brutal leg injury, but with the Cowboys winning on the road in an upset and with Washington's offensive-line injuries, I would have expected the line to move at least a point toward the Cowboys anyway. That means the McCoy factor is only worth two points, and that seems a little light to me, despite McCoy keeping Washington in the game last week. DVOA doesn't like either of these passing offenses, but there's a wide gap between the great run defense of the Cowboys and the poor job the Redskins have done against the run this year.
The Cowboys are hot right now, but I'm not so sure they're as good as they appear. However, this looks like a great matchup for them, so keep your eyes peeled to see if you can get Cowboys -7. They also make for a fine tease opportunity.
Falcons at Saints (-13)
Home-field advantage: 3.5 points
Power rating line: Saints -11.5
Lookahead line: Saints -10.5
| ATL | NO | |
|---|---|---|
| Record vs. spread | 3-7 | 8-2 |
| Yards per play differential | -0.1 | 0.2 |
| Points per drive offense rank | 4 | 1 |
| Points per drive defense rank | 31 | 23 |
| Weighted DVOA | -4.7 | 25.3 |
| Pass offense DVOA rank | 5 | 2 |
| Pass defense DVOA rank | 29 | 28 |
| Run offense DVOA rank | 26 | 8 |
| Run defense DVOA rank | 31 | 3 |
The Under is on a 4-0 streak for Thanksgiving night games and is also 7-2 in the last nine years, but I don't know many people who expect this number to go Under the total of 60. Not with the Saints scoring 40 or more six times this season and 45-plus in three straight. There's a reason these teams scored 80 points when they met earlier in the season.
As well as the Saints are playing, is this too many points to lay? They've scored 99 points in their last two games while putting up their two biggest point totals of the season. But the defense also had its two best games of the season over the last two weeks, and the Bengals and Eagles aren't exactly bottom-of-the-barrel offenses. So you can understand why this line is as high as it is.
But since the start of 2008, the Saints have beat the Falcons by this many points just once in 21 meetings, a 45-16 pasting back in 2011. The spread has only been in double-digits twice during that span and has never been more than 12, so if this closes at 13, the market is saying that this is the biggest gap in talent these two teams have ever had. Maybe the Saints are just that good, but more likely there's value on the 'dog here.
Let's put together a three-leg teaser, shall we?
Thanksgiving Teaser of the Year
Bears-Lions Under 50.5
Cowboys -1.5 vs. Redskins
Falcons-Saints Over 54
With the QB uncertainty on Chicago's side and with injuries at RB and WR for Detroit, I think it makes the most sense to tease that Under up six points and expect points to be at a premium. I also don't hate teasing the 'dog up in either case, whether it's Detroit with Mitchell Trubisky playing or Chicago with Chase Daniel at quarterback, but the Under feels like the best bet there.
I think that Dallas is a pretty safe play to win on Thanksgiving with the injury issues for Washington. I certainly don't expect them to fall behind by a large margin, and the Cowboys offense is at its best playing from ahead or in a close game when Ezekiel Elliott gets all the touches he can handle.
For the night game, I'm going to tease the total down on the marquee matchup of the day. Even if the Saints defense shows up like it has the last two weeks, we could still end up covering this number considering how well the offense is playing.
The teaser of the week is 7-4 after the Saints rolled all over the Eagles and the Chiefs didn't get blown out by the Rams in Week 11.
