Chiefs Kingdom (prop) betting guide to Thursday Night Football

Sure, the Chiefs have already played on Thursday Night football, but don’t let that stop you from kicking your weekend off early with some of the best prop bets for this week’s Thursday Night Football matchup. 

Let me start by telling you how jarring it was to start digging into Thursday night’s matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Tennessee Titans and seeing the words “Week 11” in front of my face. Didn’t the season just start? This year more than ever – with so many high-impact new faces in new places – the opening of the NFL season was so highly anticipated that it passed us by without pea-brained people like me even realizing. There are only 7 weeks of regular season football left. It’s almost Thanksgiving. What happened?

It’s truly cruel how quickly an NFL season passes you by. Like many parts of life, the amount of time you get to spend with football never seems like it’s enough. When you love something as much as many of us love football, there’s never really “enough” time you can spend with it. In fact, the ratio of football time to non-football time in a calendar year as an adult is equally as depressing as the summer time to school year ratio from our respective childhoods.

We’ve got to love the football while we’ve got it, and what better way than keeping your gambling heater going with some Thursday Night Football prop bets? As a retired gambler, I consider myself as having come up in the “old days” of sports betting. It wasn’t exactly “legal” back then, but we did it anyway. I say this to point out that my putting together a set of prop bet picks is about your parents trying to figure out social media. Am I going to accidentally FaceTime you? No, but I may accidentally go into all caps at some point.

But I’m not the ex-convict who got clean in jail speaking to you about not doing drugs at a school assembly, I’m more of a “senior consultant” to your NFL betting ventures. This is evidenced by my somehow splendid 9-4-1 in picks against the spread and over/under totals in 3 weeks this season. So why not find a way to absolutely demolish my reputation with you, the reader? Nothing better than dragging your own good name through the mud.

And what a weird game to try to pick props in. It’s going to be cold in Green Bay tomorrow night- around 26 degrees at kickoff – but that seems almost balmy by Lambeau standards. So much so that I’d almost guarantee there will be more than one Packer fan unironically shirtless in attendance. Weirder because of one glaring question: are the Packers back? They looked very back against the Cowboys last weekend. Does the Titans’ perplexing “do everything ugly” style of play travel well enough to put one on the Packers in Lambeau? I don’t know these answers, but I know which small details I think will help shape the outcome.

Here is a look at the four prop bets that I love the most for Thursday night’s matchup between the Packers and Titans.

Derrick Henry OVER 102.5 rushing yards -113

This is ballsy. I mean this is a dumb bet. But I’m a dumb bettor, so this checks out. The fact that it is at minus odds is absolutely astonishing and makes me look even dumber for recommending it. However, let me explain my stance here.

The Packers are absolute trash at stopping the run in 2022. They’ve given up over 117 yards in 9 out of 10 games on the season, an average of 140.6 per game. 26th in the NFL. These numbers are bad. Add this to the fact that Derrick Henry is, well, Derrick Henry, and you have a recipe for disaster that could win you some money if you’re dumb enough to bet on my picks.

Aaron Rodgers first touchdown scored: +3800

Picture this: the Titans win the toss, choose to defer, and the Packers receive the opening kickoff. Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon pound the ball down the field while Robert Tonyan and Christian Watson make a couple of drive extending catches along the way. The Packers get it down to the goal line on a stingy Titans defense, with the whole world expecting Jones or Dillon to get the carry or swing pass out of the backfield for the Packers’ first score.

Except instead of zigging, the Packers zag on a bootleg play action where Rodgers is left all by himself on the perimeter. He essentially walks in for the game’s first score. Does this seem far-fetched? I’ve sold myself on it, and at +3800 you don’t have to bet much to make it worth your while.

Aaron Jones over 25.5 receiving yards -113

The Titans are one of the best teams in the NFL at getting pressure with their front 4. That same front four can prevent opponents running games from gaining any traction (see: Week 9 vs. Kansas City). How would an offense slow down those front four and get them on their heels? Quick passes to running backs releasing in the middle of the field and in the flats.

Aaron Jones, like Saquon Barkley and Antonio Gibson, is exceptional at catching the ball out of the backfield. Barkley and Gibson both easily surpassed 25.5 yards receiving against the Titans’ defense with two quarterbacks who are very much not back-to-back MVP winners. Jones might have this by halftime.

First half total OVER 7.5 +116

This is a complete gut bet, but this feels right. Sure, these are two teams that will inevitably run the ball more than your typical NFL affair. Yeah, that might 100% play against where my heart is taking me here, but I believe with everything in my being that this is a 7-3 score in favor of Green Bay at the end of the first quarter.

Now, they may not score much more than this, but I can already hear Al Michaels telling me he’ll be right back after several messages from Amazon about how Amazon is changing the way you shop and watch football, presented by Amazon. Hats off to Bezos for single-handedly bringing Black Friday down a few pegs. Still a little bitter that he made football harder to watch, though.

There you go, those are my picks. Seems like a fantastic way to take my 9-4-1 published record to a humbling 9-8-1 hole that I dig even deeper on Sunday with the pressure of climbing out crushing my decision-making abilities. I’m quite literally already folding mentally after a great start. I guess if you can accept the collapse before it officially starts it will be an easier pill to swallow, right? Who knows. We’ll see.

Bonus “2019 AFC Championship Memorial” lead pipe lock of the week: Sammy Watkins +550 anytime touchdown scorer. While you won’t hear the entire crowd simultaneously say “SAMMY” as he gets behind Kevin Byard as Arrowhead did a few years back, it would certainly be a sight that would make Chiefs Kingdom smile for many reasons.

Note: Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change