Seattle Seahawks (6-5) at Dallas Cowboys (8-3)

Normally, betting a big non-divisional home favorite on Thursday Night Football is a good idea, as it’s very tough for an inferior team to travel on a short week and compete with a superior team, unless it’s a divisional matchup, leading to non-divisional home favorites going 47-32 ATS on Thursday Night Football as long as teams are both on short rest, including 17-7 ATS as non-divisional home favorites of more than a touchdown. However, that doesn’t apply this week because both of these teams played on Thanksgiving last week and, as a result, are both on normal rest.

With that in mind, this game is difficult to handicap. The Cowboys lead the league in point differential at +162 and rank 4th in efficiency, with a first down rate differential of +5.72% and a yards per play differential of +1.12, but they’ve also faced the easiest schedule in the league in terms of DVOA. The Cowboys have especially played well at home, winning all five of their home games by 20 points or more, but the combined record of their home opponents is 19-38 with no team having better than a 5-6 record. Even that 5-6 opponent was a Rams team that lost starting quarterback Matt Stafford to injury mid-game. All of their other home opponents are 4-8 or worse.

The Seahawks aren’t a great team, but they’re at least average, with a 6-5 record, a -20 point differential, a +0.16 yards per play differential, and a -0.39% first down rate differential, which means they’re by far the toughest healthy team the Cowboys have faced at home this season. The Cowboys won’t need to win by 20+ again at home to cover this 9-point spread and a 10+ point Dallas victory is certainly a possibility, as blowout victories, even of poor opponents, tend to be more predictive than close victories, but it’s hard be confident in them since we haven’t seen them play a team of Seattle’s caliber at home. The closest thing we’ve seen to Dallas playing a team of Seattle’s caliber anywhere was a 3-point win in Los Angeles against the Chargers, an uninspiring result, given that the Chargers lack homefield advantage. 

The Cowboys did also blow out the 4-8 Giants and 1-10 Panthers on the road by a total of 63 points, which is still impressive even against weak competition, and they came close to knocking off the Eagles in Philadelphia. However, they also got blown out in San Francisco and lost a game that wasn’t particularly close to a weak Cardinals team, though the Cowboys are a lot healthier now than they were earlier in the season when that loss occurred, entering this game with a 90.1 sic score that is one of the highest in the league at this point in the season, as opposed to 86.6 in that Arizona game. My calculated line based on my roster rankings adjusted for injuries and statistics adjusted for strength of schedule has the Cowboys favored by 11, which suggests they should be the right side for pick ‘em purposes at -9, but there isn’t enough here to be confident in betting on the Cowboys at this number.

Dallas Cowboys 27 Seattle Seahawks 16

Pick against the spread: Dallas -9

Confidence: Low