Turducken sized upsets and a big favorite: our NFL Week 12 picks

For those of you who don’t care how we come to our predictions, you will find the picks at the top of these posts for the rest of the season. The explanations for them are below. Enjoy!

The BSN picks of the week:

Washington Redskins +7 at Dallas Cowboys

Miami Dolphins -7.5 vs. San Francisco 49ers

New York Jets +8 vs. New England Patriots

Philadelphia Eagles -3.5 vs. Green Bay Packers

It’s time to get back to it in a special thanksgiving edition of our NFL picks. You know it’s the nitty-gritty part of the season when this week comes up as we near the end of November and enter the do or die part of the NFL schedule. Of course with thanksgiving week comes a slate of early games one of which we’re picking this week so pay attention and don’t wait to place your wagers.

Back to a winning record at 21-20-2, we’re anxious to build that lead back up. As always we’re heavily influenced by our two metrics YPP and EW offering up picks that are encouraged by both. After avoiding the traps of large YPP differentials last week the differentials Week 12 appear to be back to normal with five differentials over our preferred YPP threshold of 5 points (we’re picking two games from this pool). While EW presents three differentials over our preferred 3 points and we’ll be picking one such game.

So without further ado here are our picks, numbers and much more to prepare you for the weekly NFL slate.

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BSN ATS’ picks of the week

Washington Redskins +7

This is our one Thanksgiving Day pick and it happens to be in one of the big games of the week. The Cowboys against the Redskins is a classic NFL rivalry that seems to be back in 2016. Dallas is the NFL’s hottest team having won nine in a row while Washington is coming off a splendid performance in which they dominated the Green Bay Packers to take them to 6-3-1 on the year.

In an ultra-competitive NFC East, these two teams are playing some splendid football setting up what should be a great game, which begs the question; why is Dallas so highly favored? Sure they’re 9-1 but they’re not exactly blowing teams out. This sets up to be a hard-fought game with two great offenses going against one another. This is a matchup of the second (Washington) and third (Dallas) ranked offenses per YPP, with Washington actually ranking higher in total YPP as well – sixth vs eighth. While their defensive YPP numbers are the same – tied for 21st in the NFL – the Redskins appear to have more talent and have shown been playing nicely on that side of the ball.

With all the talk of their star rookies, people don’t realize that the Cowboys are a top-three unit in both running attack and run defense, the Redskins are the 22nd best rushing defense in the NFL so they’ll be tested. While on the other side of the ball Dallas’ 21st ranked passing defense will face a big test vs not just Kirk Cousins and the receiving group but also an offensive line that’s playing very well at the moment.

The more we look at it and the more this appears to be a close game that’ll be hard fought till the end. We’ll happily take the points as our YPP suggested spread has the Cowboys as only a -2 point favorite at home.

Miami Dolphins -7.5

The Miami Dolphins are a team that’s been good to us so far this year. In some instances when everything else didn’t seem to be working for us the Dolphins were our only true salvation. YPP loves Miami in this one having them as 11 point favorites against the lowly 49ers.

This is a matchup of the seventh best team per YPP (Miami) against the NFL’s worst (San Francisco), once you add in the home field advantage it’s easy to see why they’re such big favorites.  The 3.5 point differential here isn’t huge but it’s big enough for us to take.

The trust in these two teams is in absolutely opposite directions. San Fran remains in a steady downward trend while Miami keeps on finding ways to win and is now riding a five-game winning streak that doesn’t seem destined to end in Week 12.  Miami’s offense and defense are both ranked in the top ten per YPP while the Niners are in the bottom five in both.

You just can’t count on the Niners who’ve been especially miserable on the road this year losing by an average of 15 a game. With the Dolphins on a roll and San Francisco on a nine-game losing streak, the half point over a touchdown doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

New York Jets +8

First things first, do not take the Jets if the starter here is young Bryce Petty who we don’t feel confident about going up against Bill Belichick and his troops. But if all accounts are correct and Ryan Fitzpatrick will start, we don’t feel terrible about this one.

For starters, we’ve adjusted the numbers because even if Brady’s played well over half of the games played by New England the concern remains that those first four without him are throwing the numbers off just enough to get us in trouble. With Brady, the Patriots are averaging 6.45 yards per play in the six games since his return. That upgrades their current number significantly as their total YPP differential jumps from 0.6 to 0.9. However, that still only puts them as a -2.5 point favorite, far from the actual 8 point spread.

Adjusted YPP spread with Brady 

The issue here is that the Jets are heavily reliant on their defense that ranks 14th in YPP, their offensive YPP number isn’t terrible either as they rank 18th per the metric but they just aren’t putting up points averaging 17.9 (29th in the NFL). It’s never easy to go against the Pats but these spreads are simply too big and at home we believe the Jets can make this close enough to cover.

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Our EW pick of the week

Philadelphia Eagles -3.5

Since updating our EW metric we’ve seen some interesting results and as our EW picks have worked out for us this year we’re continuing to offer a pick encouraged solely by that metric when fit. This is an interesting game as the Eagles face off against the struggling Packers. In fairness, Philadelphia has been a bit touch and go lately as their offensive scheme has been found out and Carson Wentz isn’t making the necessary adjustments.

But make no mistake this pick is all about the Packers. This will be three weeks in a row that we’re betting against Green Bay and so far we’re 2-0. Things just aren’t right in Wisconsin right now, starting with Aaron Rodgers, the one-dimensional offense, and the defense which got exposed as well last week.

With all the talk of Philly’s offense, it’s easy to forget that the defense is actually playing quite well under coordinator Jim Schwartz. The Birds ‘D’ is nasty up front and they have some pesky defensive backs who can create big turnovers. This is a big game for both these teams as they try to get back into the hunt, we’re going with EW’s -8 suggested spread for Philly and counting on their offense having a bounce back week.

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Numbers, news, and notes

There are a few quarterback injuries or changes that are affecting the spreads this week. For starters, Andrew Luck’s still in the concussion protocol and likely won’t play in the early week slate on Thursday. For once the numbers really like the Indianapolis Colts and of course, this line is influenced by the injury. Originally the spread was set to Pittsburgh at -3 but Luck’s absence has made it jump all the way to -9.

We also have some big injury news in Chicago another team that has skewed numbers for us and will now be playing with an inexperienced quarterback in Matt Barkley. We’re staying away until we can get some sort of read on what the projected YPP for the Bears will be now that they’re down to their third starting QB on the season.

As always below you’ll find our suggested spreads for the week for both our metrics.