The Thanksgiving Day triple header in the NFL 2022 season concludes in Minneapolis when two sides with winning records battle it out in the Thursday Night Football as the Minnesota Vikings take on the New England Patriots.
Both teams are currently nicely placed for a run at the play-offs come the end of the season but after offensive struggles for the pair of them last week they will each be looking for a convincing display here.
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings look to be cruising to the NFC North title even with their defeat last week but it won’t have sat well with them how heavily they were taken apart by the Dallas Cowboys. That was particularly the case when you consider that there are still some doubters where the Vikings are concerned because a lot of their eight wins have been pretty tight affairs. I don’t see that as a negative but when you get drubbed 40-3 when you come up against a good side it does nothing to silence the doubters.
The Vikings will be out to show they are better than last week here. The positive is that they haven’t got to go on the road on a short week and prior to last week their defence had generally been pretty good and their offense more than just efficient so there are plenty of reasons to think last week was just a blip. The negative is that their defence was on the field for a long time last week and had to defend a lot of plays without too much time to recover.
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New England Patriots
The New England Patriots have had an up and down campaign so far but they sit 6-4 for it. We are used to them moving through the gears at this stage of the season and if they are going to land another AFC East title then they are going to have to do that again because they currently sit third in the division and have already seen the Buffalo Bills win on Thanksgiving in the early match. Even if they can’t win the division they are going to need to keep winning because there is a real race for the wildcard spots.
The Patriots defence has been in good working order recently. If we ignore the freaky looking showing against the Chicago Bears, in which they suffered their only loss in their last six games, in the other five games they have conceded a combined 38 points. It will be interesting to see how that defence goes here because although Bill Belichick is a master of shutting down the key weapons on an offense, there are plenty of them for Minnesota.
Betting
My gut feeling is that the New England Patriots will win this match. I say that because the Minnesota Vikings’ defence was on the field for a long time on Sunday and they haven’t had much time at all to recover and that won’t be lost on Bill Belichick. It is only a gut feeling though because Minnesota have been going well this term and I’m not convinced that New England can shut the entire Vikings’ offense down either.
It is that latter point that I’ll play on. You would imagine that Belichick will either look to stop the run or probably more likely keep Justin Jefferson out of the game but whichever one he decides it is going to leave T.J Hockenson free to run riot which he has done in all three matches he has played as a Minnesota player so far. He has a 43.5 receiving yards line and although he didn’t cover it last week he still caught five passes for 34 yards so in normal circumstances would have covered it. The other two games he has played he picked up 70 and 45 yards and with one major target taken away from Kirk Cousins I expect him to be targeting his new tight end a fair few times here. I like the over.
Tips
Back T.J. Hockenson – Over 43.5 receiving yards for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
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