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The night game on Thanksgiving features two struggling teams when the 6-4 New York Giants trave to Invesco field to play the 6-4 Denver Broncos. The Giants are 7 point favorites on the road. Ending their 4 game losing streak last week against the Falcons, the Giants have to keep pace with the Cowboys, who will most likely destroy the Raiders earlier on turkey day. The Broncos just need a win, forget playoff talk, this team just needs to go out and somehow kick, scratch, and claw their way to a victory.
Kyle Orton is expected to start Thursday’s game even with an ankle that is less than 100%. Denver really has no other option as the Chris Simms experiment was an utter disaster. Orton came in after 3 terrible offensive series for Simms and managed a 15 for 29 performance for 179 yards and 1 interception. In his first 6 games of the season Orton threw 9 touchdowns and just 1 interception. In his last 4 games, he has thrown 2 touchdowns and 4 interceptions. The problems extend past Orton in recent weeks as the Denver defense has been awful. In week 9, the 3-4 defense of Denver ranked 1st in total yards allowed, 3rd against the rush, and 2nd in points allowed. Since then the team has added 3 consecutive losses and have given up more than 29 points per game during the stretch. Teams are now averaging over 307 yards per game with 164 of those coming on the ground. Luckily for them, the Giants have not played much better in recent weeks.
The Giants snapped their own 4 game slide last week with a 34-31 victory against the Atlanta Falcons. It was certainly a needed win, but it does not hide the fact that there are many holes in this team. The 5-0 record early on was clearly a smoke screen as it came against Washington, Dallas, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, and Oakland. The next 4 losses all came against potential playoff teams in New Orleans, Arizona, Philadelphia, and San Diego. Manning received some criticism during the streak with his 5 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. The larger issue remains the Giant defense, namely the depleted secondary which has been burned by the big play far too often this season. During the 4 game losing streak, teams have scored over 40 points twice. Fortunately for New York, they play a Denver team that is 19th in the league in passing offense.
Kyle Orton is obviously a better option than Chris Simms, but it will not be good enough to pull off the win or even the cover. Denver is still a running team that relies on good defense and right now their defense is playing bad and the Giants are still solid in the running defense ranking 9th in the league allowing 103.8 yards per game. The area where Denver needs to expose the Giants, their secondary, will be a difficult task for a team that does not stretch the football field and has an injured quarterback.
The Giants are 4-5-1 ATS this season while the Broncos are 6-4 ATS. Over the last few seasons, the Giants are 17-4 ATS in their last 21 games on the road. The O/U for the game is 42. The Giants games have gone 6-3-1 O/U while the Broncos are 2-8 O/U. The O/U really speaks to two very different styles of football. The Giants can both score and give up a lot of points as seen in recent weeks and the Broncos play many low scoring and ugly games, rarely going over the posted vegas “Total”.
Giants vs. Broncos Thanksgiving Night Picks: The Giants will cover the 7 points. Take the over 42 points as Denver should be able to expose the Giants secondary to score 14-17 points while the Giants should be able to put up 30-35 against a very poor playing Denver defense.
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