A Prop Bet Kicks Off Thanksgiving Football

Packers vs. Lions, 1:00 ET

Thanksgiving is a time for all of us to be, well, thankful. As this is the first play of the day, I want to share a few things I'm grateful for: first is Outkick for giving me a platform to do something I truly enjoy. Betting on sports is a pleasure, and getting to share my thoughts on it has been a very rewarding experience. I'm thankful for football on this great day, because I can keep myself from saying something stupid in front of in-laws by focusing on the games. I'm thankful for my good buddy Geoff Clark who keeps our betting conversation going and provides a great podcast weekly to all of you. I am also thankful for every reader, sharer, lurker, and Twitter follower, it means a lot that you support what I do. Hopefully, wins repay you, and show you my thankfulness toward you. Let's start Turkey Day right with a win between the Packers and the Lions.

The Packers are 7-3-1 for the season, but at times they have looked like they could miss the playoffs altogether, or they could be Super Bowl Champions. It really is hard to judge just how successful they will be this year. Defensively, they've looked very good, especially with the addition of Micah Parsons. On offense, there are still a lot of question marks because Jordan Love just isn't that consistent. His stats show that he is 224-for-331 for the season with 15 touchdowns and just three interceptions, but watching games makes me question a lot of his success. The Packers have been pretty good on the road overall after starting 0-1-1. The first loss was to the Browns where the Packers just couldn't get any sort of offense going in Cleveland. The tie was against Dallas, where they racked up 40 points, but clearly it wasn't enough as their defense couldn't get a stop. Their next three road games have been against the Cardinals, Steelers, and Giants. All of them were wins for the Packers, but again, I wouldn't say they looked amazing. 

Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

The Lions probably have revenge on their mind for this game as they were somewhat embarrassed in the opening game against the Packers. In the opening week, they dropped that game 27-13. That was a road game, but it made the Lions offense look rough. Usually, a strength of the team, Detroit just kind of sputtered out over and over again. I fully expect one big difference for them in this game compared to the others - their high rusher for Week 1 was David Montgomery at 25 yards. They will almost certainly work to establish the ground game and get something going. Jahmyr Gibbs will almost certainly be more involved than in the first game. He had just nine carries for 19 yards. He did have 10 receptions on 10 targets, but they were all around the line of scrimmage, and he was wrapped up pretty quickly. The Packers do have the sixth best rushing defense in football, but I think the Lions look to push that issue as much as possible this week.

As you can probably guess, I'm going to go with a player prop as my official play. Gibbs has never really been all that fantastic against Green Bay, so maybe they have his number. All he needs is one play to go over his total, but he hasn't shown he does it against the Packers. My play is actually on David Montgomery to go under 39.5 rushing yards. I fully expect Gibbs to be more involved. Montgomery has averaged just 42 yards per game this season, with half of them going under this total. You could call it seven if you want to count the game against the Vikings where he got to just 40 yards. Here are the other thoughts: over for the game total, Lions to win, and Gibbs to go over his 4.5 receptions. 

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