In 1934, George A. Richards bought the Portsmouth Spartans, moved the team to Detroit, and renamed them the Lions because they were destined to become the “kings of the NFL.”
The Lions were the new team in town, competing against Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers (World Series champions in 1934) and the Michigan Wolverines (the defending 1933 national champions). To stand out in that crowd, and with those beloved local champions, Richards needed to do something different. The Lions needed a hook.
That hook became football on Thanksgiving Day – a tradition in Detroit ever since.
Chicago Bears at Detroit Lions (-10.5)
This is also the 100th anniversary of America’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, first started in Detroit in 1924 by the J.L. Hudson department store.
So whatever your tradition is – parades, football, or a tryptophan-induced coma – it begins in Detroit, and with the best Lions team we might have ever seen. They are 10-1 for the first time since that 1934 season, when at 10-1 on Thanksgiving Day, they lost 19-16 to the Chicago Bears.
For the first time in 90 years, the Lions enter the holiday week with the same record and the same opponent. But the Bears were a much better team in 1934 than they are today, finishing that season a perfect 13-0 before losing to the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game.
This Bears team finds interesting ways to lose games, as they did on Sunday by scoring 11 points in the final 22 seconds of the fourth quarter, only to lose it in overtime.
On the other sideline is the team most are calling the best team in the NFL in 2024. The Lions have won nine straight games, and in the last two weeks, they’ve outscored their opponents 76-12.
New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys (-4)
The Dallas Cowboys first hosted a Thanksgiving Day game in 1966, a 26-14 win over the Cleveland Browns. The NFL gave the game to St. Louis for a pair of years in the 1970s, but other than 1975 and 1977, the Cowboys have been at home and serving turkey for nearly 60 years.
In the most pejorative sense of the word, the New York Giants come into this game as the NFL’s biggest turkeys. They dumped quarterback Daniel Jones last week just 16 starts into his $160 million contract. And at one point on Sunday, they trailed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium, 30-0.
In the words of rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers, “It ain’t the quarterback. This is the same outcome when we had [Jones] at QB.”
Nabers added, “I started getting the ball when it’s 30-0. What do you want me to do? Talk to [head coach Brian Daboll] about that.”
Dexter Lawrence was even more to the point. “We played soft and they beat the s*** out of us today.”
A week ago, we might have thought that a trip to Dallas was exactly what the Giants needed. But the Cowboys are coming off their biggest high of the season, a game in which they led the Washington Commanders, 10-9, after three quarters. They won by the final score of 34-26. It ended a five-game losing streak for Dallas, and gave them a 2-1 record inside the NFC East.
Miami Dolphins at Green Bay Packers (-3.5)
In 2006, the NFL added a third Thanksgiving Day game in primetime, and this year, the game is at Lambeau Field. The Packers have a long history of Thanksgiving games, and throughout the 1950s and early ’60s, they played at Detroit every year on Thanksgiving. Instead, they will make the trip to face the Lions next Thursday, and this week they host the Miami Dolphins.
Can we trust the Dolphins again? They certainly have looked better in November, with three straight wins. But those wins have come against three teams with losing records, which is definitely not the case this week in Green Bay.
After this week, Miami’s schedule does soften back up, with games against the New York Jets twice, Cleveland Browns, and San Francisco 49ers.
For the Packers, the task is to get this win and then head to Detroit for their NFC North showdown with momentum.
Las Vegas Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs (-13)
Because you can never have too much NFL football, the league decided to add Black Friday to its holiday weekend schedule in 2023. This year, we get the Las Vegas Raiders, now without Gardner Minshew at quarterback for the remainder of the season, against the 10-1 Kansas City Chiefs.
Last year, this was an equally lopsided matchup on Christmas Day, and the Raiders won at Arrowhead. But that was one of the strangest games in recent memory. The Raiders scored two defensive touchdowns and finished the game with 48 net passing yards, winning 20-14.
It was the last time the Chiefs lost a game until two Sundays ago in Buffalo.
The Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes seem to (almost) always find a way to win at the end. But they have not covered a point spread since Week 7 in San Francisco. When these two teams met earlier in the season in Las Vegas, the Chiefs won, but the Raiders covered the spread.
With over 25 years of experience as a distinguished sports writer for renowned platforms such as Fox Sports and ESPN, Kyle Garlett is a sports betting specialist who has been at the forefront of documenting the global surge in sports betting and online gaming. Based in Denver, Colorado, Kyle hosts an NFL betting YouTube show and podcast. Kyle also has two sports books published by HarperCollins.
Kyle graduated the Azusa Pacific University in 1996 with a B.A. Degree in Communication and Journalism.
