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Cotton

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Short week. Gotta enjoy the victory quickly and move on to the Skins.
 

Cotton

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NFL Week 12 early odds: Cowboys favored big over Redskins in Thanksgiving game

You might want to go ahead and clear 10 hours of your schedule on Thanksgiving for NFL games because the league is about to give us something we haven't seen in over eight decades.

The three games being played this Thursday will mark the first time in 81 years that there will be three or more games on Thanksgiving involving teams that all have a record of .500 or better.

On paper, all three games seem pretty evenly matched, however, the oddsmakers in Vegas don't always look at that paper when they're putting together the spreads each week. According to them, the biggest mismatch on Thanksgiving is taking place in Dallas where the Cowboys are a 6.5 point favorite over the Redskins.

That's right, the Cowboys are favored by nearly a touchdown over a Redskins team that's 6-1-1 in its past eight games, the same Redskins team that lost by just four points to the Cowboys in Week 2.
That's your main course for Thanksgiving.

Your appetizer will feature a showdown where first place in the NFC North will be on the line in Detroit. In that game, the 6-4 Lions are a 2.5 point favorite over the Vikings.

For dessert on Thanksgiving Day, you'll get the Steelers and Colts in prime time. In that game, the Steelers are currently 2.5 point road favorites.

Will this be the best Thanksgiving ever?
 

dallen

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Man, short week means we got to rest even more
 

Cotton

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If they want to beat Cowboys, Redskins won’t have any time to lose

By Mark Maske, Mike Jones and Liz Clarke November 20 at 7:14 PM

In the NFL, there is a time limit for celebrating a victory, savoring a good performance, lamenting a defeat or brooding over an on-field mistake. Some teams call it a midnight rule; to others, it is a 24-hour rule. After that, it’s time to move on because it’s a week-to-week league and another game looms.

This week for the Washington Redskins, it had better be something closer to a 24-minute rule. Or maybe a 24-second rule. The Redskins face a turnaround about as rapid as they come, leaving behind their Sunday night game against the Green Bay Packers at FedEx Field to get ready for a late-afternoon Thanksgiving Day meeting with the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas.

All NFL teams deal with the Sunday-to-Thursday preparation rush each season. But for the Redskins, things will be even more hurried and perhaps harried than usual this week, with the lateness of Sunday’s game and the earliness of Thursday’s game trimming a few hours off each end of the usual equation.

“It’s hard enough,” veteran defensive lineman Cullen Jenkins said last week. “But it’s Sunday night and Thursday afternoon. By the time you finish the game Sunday night, you get home, it’s Monday morning and turn around and fly out Wednesday to go to the game. It’s definitely a really quick turnaround . . . And the other thing is the flight. It’s a good little flight down there. So I got the little tights that I’ll wear to help keep the swelling down and limit stiffness. You’ve got to try everything.”

Another Redskins defensive lineman, Ricky Jean Francois, said: “It’s B.S. Why you gonna have a bunch of guys playing Sunday night and in a few days afterward you got a bunch of guys playing a Thursday afternoon in Dallas?… I would like for you guys to ask [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell this question. I don’t really believe the NFL believes in player-safety. All they’re trying to do is make another buck.”

Coach Jay Gruden kept the players’ schedule the same as usual last week, wanting to keep their minds on the game at hand. That obviously will change this week, and most teams facing the Sunday-to-Thursday turnaround minimize the intensity of on-field work and focus on recovery and mental preparation for players. The Redskins are scheduled to conduct only walk-throughs, no full practices.

“The schedule-makers did us no favors playing a night game on a Sunday and then having to leave Wednesday afternoon and play Thursday,” Gruden said last week. “That’s going to be a grind and we have to adjust our schedule . . . After the game Sunday night, we’ll talk about our schedule with the players. We’ll have to find a way to get the work in to get ready for Dallas.”

It is a cram session for coaches, and the Redskins began their preparations for this Cowboys game during the recent bye week.

“Our bye week we dedicated a few days obviously to ourselves, our self-scout, going back and evaluating ourselves,” defensive coordinator Joe Barry said. “We dedicated a day to the Vikings [the Redskins’ first post-bye opponent]. But we also dedicated a day — as a coaching staff, I’m talking about — to the Cowboys. So we got a little bit of legwork done over the bye week for these guys. But it’s hard. It’s a challenge that every single team has, every single week, playing on a short week on Thursday night.”

The coaches also planned to spend time on the Cowboys while they were at the team’s hotel Sunday, waiting for the late start to the Packers game.

“People don’t realize how big a difference it is between playing a 1 o’clock game on Sunday and playing an 8:30 game on Sunday,” Barry said. “So as coaches we are going to do a little bit of work at the hotel on Sunday . . . since we’re going to have quite a bit of time in the hotel on Sunday. But it’s hard. It’s a challenge. It’s part of the deal.”

It’s also part of the deal that all Thursday games are particularly difficult on the team that must fit traveling into its condensed workweek. Home teams are 8-3 in Thursday games this season, and six of the eight victories have come by eight points or more. There remains skepticism in and around the sport about the wisdom of the NFL playing a Thursday game each week throughout the season, although such an argument does not apply to the Thanksgiving games.

“I don’t really care what the league office has to say: The human body wasn’t meant to play football on three days rest, not at the level that we play,” Hall of Fame front office executive Bill Polian said recently. “The Thursday nights have been awful. Maybe not awful. The Thursday night games have not been compelling. But I realize why: One team is traveling. Both teams are beat to hell. So that comes with the territory. You can’t expect to have a game on three days rest. The malarkey that they have the long bye afterward, that’s just a talking point.”

The NFC East-leading Cowboys, winners of nine straight games, have an easier path to this game than the Redskins do. They played a 1 p.m. ET game at home Sunday, and play again at home Thursday.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to play in that game against Dallas,” Jean Francois said. “That’s the game that everybody grew up on: Thursday, the Thanksgiving game, and we’re playing in Dallas. Who wouldn’t want to play in that game?… But you’re making two powerful teams play on short notice—especially us. We’re playing Sunday night…. At the end of the day, the NFL says they’re down for player safety. But they do a lot of things to show us what they’re really about is the green.”

Players, like coaches, must do their preparation early, Jenkins said.

“You have to do a lot of stuff ahead of time,” Jenkins said. “Make sure you get enough rest and sleep, eat right and take care of your body. Once you get to Sunday, on Sunday and Monday, you can’t be scrambling to get anything extra in. By then, it’s already too late . . . Eat healthier, avoid fried foods, alcohol. Try to limit that stuff as much as possible so your body heals fast.”
 

dallen

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It is really shitty of the NFL to schedule Sunday Night teams on Thursday, especially the road team. I think they should get rid of TNF except on Thanksgiving anyway. But it isn't fair to have such a short time between games. If you play on Thursday you should have play in the afternoon on Sunday, preferably in the early game. In all honesty I think if they want to keep TNF they should probably only schedule team on Thursday coming off their bye week.
 

dallen

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But since this is the Skins all I offer them is a hearty :laff
 

Texas Ace

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One of the other negative trends of the Cowboys in the Romo/Garrett era is that they lost Thanksgiving far too much for my liking.

The short rest and travel hasn't hindered the visiting team much at all in recent years.

We've lost 4 of our last 6 Thanksgiving games -- 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2015.

One of the things I like about this year's team is that they are bucking all the ugly trends of recent years and are showing that it means nothing to them. I hope they continue doing just that and they beat the Redskins to give us our best and most important Thanksgiving victory in quite some time.
 

Cotton

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Rev

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It is really shitty of the NFL to schedule Sunday Night teams on Thursday, especially the road team. I think they should get rid of TNF except on Thanksgiving anyway. But it isn't fair to have such a short time between games. If you play on Thursday you should have play in the afternoon on Sunday, preferably in the early game. In all honesty I think if they want to keep TNF they should probably only schedule team on Thursday coming off their bye week.

At least they were at home. I think recently the team we played had a Sunday night game on the road.
 

Simpleton

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We played on Sunday night, on the road, halfway across the country in 2014 before Thanksgiving.

So no, I don't give two left fucks when or where the Redskins played last night.
 

Cowboysrock55

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One of the other negative trends of the Cowboys in the Romo/Garrett era is that they lost Thanksgiving far too much for my liking.

The short rest and travel hasn't hindered the visiting team much at all in recent years.

We've lost 4 of our last 6 Thanksgiving games -- 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2015.

One of the things I like about this year's team is that they are bucking all the ugly trends of recent years and are showing that it means nothing to them. I hope they continue doing just that and they beat the Redskins to give us our best and most important Thanksgiving victory in quite some time.
Part of that I think is Romo though. He is a guy who needs the extra rest between games to get his body right. I'm hoping a guy like Dak will change that trend a little. Although I'm a little concerned with the wear and tear on Elliott after the Ravens game with the quick turnaround.
 

Cowboysrock55

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It is really shitty of the NFL to schedule Sunday Night teams on Thursday, especially the road team. I think they should get rid of TNF except on Thanksgiving anyway. But it isn't fair to have such a short time between games. If you play on Thursday you should have play in the afternoon on Sunday, preferably in the early game. In all honesty I think if they want to keep TNF they should probably only schedule team on Thursday coming off their bye week.
I hate Thursday night games. I hate that we have to follow up the Thanksgiving Thursday night game with another Thursday night game. I think it is unsafe for players and leads to really bad games because teams have no had time to prepare their minds and bodies for the game. To me the NFL made a mistake with that move and it's hurting their product.
 

dallen

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I hate Thursday night games. I hate that we have to follow up the Thanksgiving Thursday night game with another Thursday night game. I think it is unsafe for players and leads to really bad games because teams have no had time to prepare their minds and bodies for the game. To me the NFL made a mistake with that move and it's hurting their product.
I don't even watch them unless we are playing. They aren't entertaining
 
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