Betting the Bears on Thanksgiving: Lions game spread, total and survivor

Thanksgiving is one of the best holidays.

What’s better than family, food and football?

Well football that doesn’t include a Chicago Bears team trending in the complete wrong direction, featuring a back up quarterback, on the road, against a winless Detroit Lions squad.

That’s not quite the best match up.

But that’s what we get. Maybe talking politics will actually be better than watching the game?

Let’s check in on the survivor pool, where we lost three more competitors, including boss man Lester. All of them went down swinging on Tennessee. I, too, took my second strike on the Titans, while someone else took an L on the Bears.

In the pick ‘ems pool I was somehow the week’s high scorer with an 11, but two others also had 11. Macksmith and MonstersoftheMidway are up top tied at 105 apiece.

Chicago Bears (-3) at Detroit Lions (O/U 41.5)

According to DraftKings Sportsbook, the Bears are 3-point road favorites, but I’m not sure how good anyone feels about it considering that the Lions are getting their starting quarterback back and the Bears are starting Andy Dalton.

Then there have been the rumors about Matt Nagy’s job status that may be causing a distraction this week. A short week at that.

But, if Nagy has been bad with extra prep time, he’s been pretty good on short weeks.

The Bears have played three Thursday games in season under Matt Nagy and have won all three times, beating the Lions on Thanksgiving twice and the Buccaneers last season. They covered as a favorite once (-3, against the Lions in 2018) and as an underdog once (+3.5 against the Bucs) and won outright once, but didn’t cover (-5.5 against Detroit in ‘19).

Detroit has a better record against the spread than the Bears (6-4) just barely though (Chicago is 5-5).

It’s a tough spot to read either team here. The Lions are still playing their opponents tough and giving them all they can get, but can’t close it out and the Bears have blown late leads in the final seconds of the last two games.

With that said, I’ve flip-flopped on this game so many times, but I am going to lay the points here. The Bears have been good on short weeks and I think that they can take care of their business. It’s either a “win one for the Gipper” situation or just beating a bad team. Plus, favorites are 24-7 on Thanksgiving since 2000.

I’ll take the over too, because why not? Two struggling defenses, two bad offenses, there could be some defensive scores. Take the over.

In the survivor pool I have put in the Chargers right now, but I might change it to the Bucs just because I want to stay in this thing and I still have a few good teams left to burn.

My picks: Bears -3, er 4over1.5, Chargers (survivor)

2021 Bears record: 5-5 ATS, 7-13 overall