GREEN BAY PACKERS @ DETROIT LIONS 
Vegas Line: Lions + 6
Rob’s Line: Lions + 5.5
This game has been on the radar ever since Detroit beat Chicago 24-13 on Monday Night Football in Week 5. That win meant the Lions went 5-0 and shared the NFC North lead with the Packers. Suddenly, despite being weeks away, talk was of the most meaningful Thanksgiving Day game the Motor City had witnessed in recent (living?) memory.
Five games on and Green Bay boast the only unbeaten record in the NFL while Detroit, having gone 2-3 since that win over the Bears, are in the thick of the race for a wildcard spot. Two wins in five isn’t the greatest form to take into this one and they’ve been patchy at best, but when they’ve hit a groove, there’s almost no stopping them. Two of the losses were against good teams (49ers and Falcons), but the Bears really went to town on them, avenging that earlier MNF loss with a 37-13 hammering at Soldier Field. Is hammering too strong a word? Believe me, that scoreline flattered Detroit.
Cam Newton and the Panthers visited last week and they looked to be shaking off that horrible loss to the Titans a week earlier when they led 24-7 midway through the second quarter. However, what happened next truly was a bunch of fives on two counts as the Lions outscored Carolina 35-8 in the second half.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford finished with five touchdown passes and the team scored five touchdowns in the aforementioned second half to win a crazy one 49-35. This pattern of behaviour though is nothing new to Lions fans this season as they became the first NFL team since at least 1950 to win three games in a season having trailed by at least 17 points. (Thank you to ESPN via STATS, LLC for that one).
Detroit haven’t had it so good in a long time and as admirable as these comebacks are, they face a Green Bay team that likes to start fast (the 25-14 comeback win over the Falcons aside) and who haven’t yet been caught all season. The Packers are averaging 35.5 points per game and they can almost score at will. That didn’t exactly happen in what was a surprisingly close encounter with the Buccaneers last week, but when Aaron Rodgers really had to pull something out of the bag, he did.
Detroit will have been poring over every second of game film from that one and what does stand out is Bucs QB Josh Freeman going 28 of 38 for 342 yards against Green Bay’s 31st ranked pass defense. Stafford has more weapons at his disposal and will surely look to exploit a Packers secondary that should see a lot of the ball coming its way in the playoffs. There is a caveat to the near upset in Wisconsin last week and that’s that there was a suspicion even before the game that the Packers would have one eye on this one, particularly in what is the shortest week an NFL player can have…especially as the road team.
The odds are on Aaron Rodgers and co. reverting back to the machine like efficiency they’ve displayed for most of the season and if Detroit can’t escape their customary slow start, I can’t see them clawing themselves back into this one. The simple truth is that the Lions are very unpredictable whereas the Packers are anything but and while Ford Field will be cacophonous, I like Green Bay to cover.
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