The third and final match of a mouth-watering day of Thanksgiving football comes from the Lucas Oil Stadium as the Indianapolis Colts welcome the Pittsburgh Steelers to their home stadium for a battle between two sides who are scrapping hard to try and win their division titles.
Heading into the night the Steelers are half a game behind Baltimore in the AFC North while the Colts trail Houston by one and a half games so a win for both would be very useful which should make for an excellent finale to the triple header.
Indianapolis Colts
The Colts go into the match off the back of a win over the Tennessee Titans but that win came at a cost with their quarterback Andrew Luck suffering a concussion which will keep him out of this match. That means that the back up Scott Tolzien comes into the starting position for this game which hugely changes the dynamic of the offense.
With the output from the offense likely to struggle, and it would struggle every week anyway if Andrew Luck wasn’t so good given the ridiculously poor protection the quarterback is given, the Colts will need their defence to really stand up and get them out of trouble but against a powerful offense that looks unlikely.
Pittsburgh Steelers
I fancied the Pittsburgh Steelers to dominate this season and it looked like I would be right on track at the start of the season but then came the injury to Ben Roethlisberger and although he has recovered from that the side haven’t really been the same since. Injuries elsewhere in the offense are starting to hurt them but they did enjoy a morale boosting win over Cleveland last weekend.
In that match the Pittsburgh defence managed to get to the quarterback to generate regular sacks and that might not have come at a bad time because they get to go after a ridiculous poor pass protection here. This could be a rare occasion that the Steelers can get a match done on defence alone.
Betting
I don’t really like this match from a betting point of view. Clearly Indianapolis are going to be a different side with Scott Tolzien at quarterback and as such I would favour Pittsburgh to win the game but they’re a different side away than the one that plays at home and on a short week I’m in no rush to back them on a much larger handicap than we would get.
Not knowing how Tolzien will play doesn’t help matters so I’m going to go fairly conservative in this final match with just the one bet. That is on the Pittsburgh tight end Jesse James. His receiving yards line is 20.5 which might normally look a little on the high side but not this week. It is well know the Colts can’t stop tight ends and this line is low enough that two catches should be enough to cover. I like the chances of that.
Tips
Back J.James Over 20.5 receiving yards for a 4/10 stake at 1.85 with Ladbrokes
Back him here:
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