NFL Picks

NFL Betting Game Trends

Game Overview

The battle on the NFL odds in the NFC North will be hot and heavy on Sunday afternoon at the Metrodome, where the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions battle it out for playoff positioning.

Detroit might be on the road, but it is favored in this game for a reason. When these two teams met earlier this year, QB Matt Stafford tore apart the Vikings for tons of yards, but he just couldn’t get the ball in the end zone more than once, and that came with his legs. WR Calvin Johnson came out this week and said that he suffered some nerve damage in his hand when he played against these Vikings, and that it has hurt the way that he has caught the football this year. Still, the Megatron insists that he is healthy, and he is going to try his best to get into the end zone for just the second time this year. The ground game, as always, is really struggling for the Lions, though RB Mikel Leshoure looks like he is going to at least end up with 500+ yards this year, something that no back did a campaign ago.

The Vikings are really falling from grace and have been over the course of the last several weeks. They were beaten by the Seattle Seahawks last week 30-20 on the road, which knocked them to the wrong side of the playoff picture for the first time all year long. What’s being proven is that QB Christian Ponder just isn’t the type of player that is going to be able to lead a team at this point in his career. Ponder has eight picks against just 10 TD passes, and he probably is going to have his life made a heck of a lot more difficult without WR Percy Harvin, who had a kick return for a touchdown to start the game that these two played in Motown several weeks ago. That is going to leave a lot of the pressure on RB Adrian Peterson. Purple Jesus has been out of this world this year, rushing for 957 yards and six TDs, and he has 150 yards as well on 26 receptions. No one on the team save for Harvin has more than 27 catches on the year though, so that could make the ground game all the more important on Sunday.

Prediction

This game is about payback for the Lions, and we think that they are going to get it. Minnesota is being firmly reminded about the fact that it was one of the worst teams in the league last year, and it can expect to see the same result this time around in the second half of this season. Detroit 21 – Minnesota 14