To assure Thanksgiving Dinner could not be served without a National Football League game playing, the league added a third game for the holiday in 2006. Since the inception of the NFL in 1920, the League has played football on this holiday. The Detroit Lions began the tradition of hosting a Thanksgiving game in 1934, the Dallas Cowboys began their streak of entertaining a visitor on this day in 1966.
Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm lobbied for his upstart team in Dallas to join the Lions in hosting a game on Thanksgiving to give his relatively new franchise national exposure. You might say it worked. Dallas is today the most valuable franchise in professional sports. The one-time blot on the city best known for being the site of the John Kennedy assasination in public awareness, shifted to the distinction of Dallas and their Cowboys being known as America’s Team.
It was American Football League founder and Kansas City Chiefs Owner Lamar Hunt who championed the league to add a third game to be played on this holiday. It was decided not to have one team host the late Thanksgiving game every year, but offer the home site and opponent on a rotating basis.
Two things interesting about the third game. Hunt’s Chiefs did host that first Thanksgiving night game and beat the Denver Broncos, 19-10, and Hunt lived just long enough to see his quest for a third Thanksgiving game come to fruition. He died in 2006 less than three weeks after that Kansas City win.
A few years ago, there was chatter about the possibility of stripping the tradition away from the Lions hosting a Thanksgiving game. The reason was simple, the franchise had been so weak for so long that the holiday routinely began with the Lions getting their butts kicked by the Green Bay Packers, Buffalo Bills or seemingly any other team the league scheduled for the game in Detroit.
Now, the Lions are among the best teams in the league, and tomorrow the NFL has perhaps the best schedule ever for the three-game schedule. All six teams in action on Thursday have interest buzzing around them for playoff implications or, in the case of the late game today, a quarterback situation. We will find out on Thanksgiving whether Lamar Jackson is headed to the sideline with an injury for the Baltimore Ravens, and if the Cincinnati Bengals Joe Burrow is ready to see his first action since suffering a toe injury in the season’s second week.
And the game in Detroit, well this is a great matchup with huge playoff implications and the division race in the NFC North.
The Lions, who earned the National Football Conference top seed with 15 regular season wins last year, are currently in third place in the NFC North. Sounds bad, but in fact their third-place standing is just one game behind the front-running Chicago Bears, who the Lions have already beaten once this season in their first of two head-to-head meetings.
Wedged between the Bears and Lions are the Packers, who have a rare tie in their season standings to leave them one-half game back of the Bears and the same margin ahead of the Lions.
The possibility of the NFC North landing three teams in the playoffs, like they did last year, is not likely because the NFC West also has three teams with at least seven wins in the Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers.
The Lions avoided having this game stripped from their schedule by years of inept play and now give us a great start to the day with a game between two quality teams and serious playoff implications.
It is a classic battle between a stout defense, brought to the Motor City by the Packers, and an explosive high-octane offense for the home team.
It’s Wednesday, it’s an intriguing matchup, and I have the opportunity to do a lot of work once I see how the numbers play out with a canvas of the casino’s before releasing, or not releasing, a selection on this game. But right now, I’d say the home team has an edge and likely will be our pick to start the parade of NFL games tomorrow.
Qoxhi Picks: Detroit Lions (-2½) over Green Bay Packers