It’s Thanksgiving this week, which means a who day of NFL football on Thursday.
As tradition has it, both the Cowboys and Lions will have home games with the Redskins visiting Dallas and the first place Bears going to Detroit.
The Falcons will visit the Saints in the night game.
Although all the matchups are NFC, and involve the division leaders, the Lions game, which leads off the slate at 12:30 has some interesting things going for it.
Think about it, even at 4-6, they Lions may be better than their NFC East rivals and will probably give the Bears a better run than the Falcons with the Saints.
However, that’s if Matthew Stafford can keep the tremendous Bears defense down and break their four game winning streak.
How can they do it, well play a hurry up offense, which is what the Vikings did to slow up the Bears last week.
The problem is that it’s a short week for Stafford, who is getting used to a few new wide receivers.
“Not a ton of time throwing and catching with those guys in live games,” Stafford said to reporters on Monday. “But it was nice to have those guys come up and make some plays. Obviously, Kenny (Golladay) had a great game and then I thought Bruce did a really nice job stepping in. I don’t know how long he’s been here; maybe 10 days. So it was really good for him to get out there and get his feet wet.”
In their loss to Carolina on Sunday, the Lions didn’t use a full hurry-up, but they were effective when they did employ a quick drop scheme.
“It wasn’t all the quick passing game,” coach Matt Patricia said to reporters Monday. “There was definitely some downfield stuff that we tried to hit and there some plays where guys just made some plays, which is good to see also on some of those situations. I think you always try to have a balance.”
But being shorthanded, the Lions may not be able to employ a quick scheme to stop the Bears. It’s something, so Stafford will have to make do with what he has right now to break through on Chicago.
“You’ve got to do what you do and do it well,” he said. “Obviously, they have really good players, they have a really good scheme.
“There’s really strengths at all three levels of the defense. You look at their front, their front is playing as good as anyone in the league right now. I think they’ve got two really good linebackers and their secondary is playing great, too.”
It’s what may make this game interesting.
Bears vs. Lions Thanksgiving Turkey Day Free Play Odds
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