This.

Week on a very special Thanksgiving episode of Underdogs, we're going to give you a menu of NFL betting options to click on while you are watching football with your family.

And they will keep the feast going with a draft of Thanksgiving Day's side dishes.

The cry goes up so far and near for Under Dog.

Under Dog. Tent down going on right now.

Baro, up to Sean.

Five seconds left in the game. Did you believe in marital? Nick. Five, George. The dream is alive. Underdog. And I guess there's only one thing left to do. Win the whole fucking thing.

It's The Underdogs. Happy to be here with you. I'm Jordan Brenner. Joined as always by my co-host, Peter Keating. And Peter, let me be the first to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, Jordan. A great day. A day of family, a feasting, a football, of reconciliation. Thanksgiving is the best. And also the biggest sports betting week of the year in America.

Well, because Thanksgiving is the best, we're going to give you a little special episode today. We're going to take a break from the Underdogs, Underdogs Contest. That has nothing to do with the fact that Sarah had her best week picking games last week. We just got a chalk full of excitement episode to bring you. Later on, we're going to have a very special draft and I'll give you a clue it's going to get tasty. But first-.

What- You might even say it's stuffed. That's right. With good-.

But speaking of stuffed, we've got three Thanksgiving Day football games to get you ready for, to get you excited about, and to give you a little stake in. So what we're going to do, Peter, if it's okay with you, is we're going to go through the three games and we're going to build a parlay. And this parlay will be available on DraftKings, and we'll tweet it out. And we will all root together. I'll bet it. Our audience can if they like. And we'll have a little fun. We'll spice up-.

This is like the Madden to Duckin. We're going to build it one leg at a time.

That's right. We'll spice up our Thanksgiving a little bit. So first up, we've got the Detroit Lions hosting the Green Bay Packers. I think the Lions are currently favored by seven and a half points. The over under right now is sitting at 47 and a half. But Peter, I think we're going away from the total and the spread for our first leg of this fabulous Thanksgiving parlay. I think we both gravitated toward the same prop. Am I right?

I think you're right. Like your table on Thanksgiving, this is a big spread, Jordan. I prefer to look at some of the matchups and tendencies. Jordan, I think it's safe to say we try to catch as many NFL games as we can, but a lot of times you and I are both trapped this year into watching the New York teams play. I'm telling you, there is no bigger contrast. And if you watch aof a Jets or a Giants game and then you watch a Detroit Lions game, Detroit Lions run blocking is a thing of beauty. I don't know if the Jets know what a stunt is. I don't know if the giants are playing five guys on the line half the time because it looks like it's just a porous sift. But you have Detroit, it's like a little symphony of these big guys right on the line moving in and out and clearing these lanes. And, Jameer Gibbs has looked great the last couple of weeks, but David Montgomery has looked great, all-season long. And Green Bay's run defense has left a lot to be desired.

Yes, much like a green bean. You can slice right through them. To your point, Peter, David Montgomery has a touchdown in every full game he's played this year, at least one touchdown. Okay, so you can get right now, as a bet on its own, a Montgomery anytime touchdown, I believe is currently minus 140. But what we're going to do is take Montgomery anytime touchdown to make it the first leg of this parlay. Now look, normally I'd like something with a little bit better odds than that. Touchdowns, there's some variance. It requires a lot of things to happen. The ball to be in a certain position in the field, necessarily for him to have a scoring opportunity. But look, in the last two seasons, Lions running backs have 41 total touchdowns in 27 games. They've got 14 this year. They get lots of opportunities. The biggest question is Montgomery sharing a role with Jameer Gibbs. It's a little concerning that Gibbs actually got some carries inside the 10 last week, which had been Montgomery's unquestioned role early in the season. But it is telling that with the game online and the ball at the one-yard line, who got the carry to win the game last week?

David Montgomery.

Yeah, Green Bay is giving up the fifth most rushing attempts, which is interesting. Teams love to run on Green Bay, seventh most yards, ninth most yards per attempt. I was a lot more concerned, mostly because I had gifts on my fantasy team, about the sharing earlier in the season. They've shown this season, as they did last year, there's enough touchdowns to go around.

So let's plug in Montgomery as the first leg of this parlay. I will say if you're watching this game and you're looking for other bets, a couple of other stats have popped out to me. First of all, watch the line. If this gets to seven or below, I think it might be worth a play on the lines. They've just been great against the spread. They're 19 and eight against the spread the past two seasons, including 10 and four at home. This team continues to surprise people. Green Bay is not a very good team. Also, I think the Over could be in play, especially if it dips below 47. Thirteen and nine at home to the Over and Campbell's three years with the Lions. This is one of those weird stats that I like to look up, but it might be worth something. It might not. Thanksgiving Home-unders with totals of 46 or greater are 14-9 in the past 20 years, so it's been profitable. So pay attention to that. I think if you can get below 47, it's like a 27-20 game, it's worth it and below a touchdown. But we'll be back on another Lion's Bet in a little bit.

Let's move on to the Cowboys against the Commanders, Peter. The second leg of this three course meal of awesome.

Oh, Jordan, I hate to have to say this, but come on, the dislike of Dallas has gotten a little too intense. Dallas is a little bit better than people realize, much as it pains me to say it. They're capable of blowing out teams. They beat the spread routinely. I think there's a few reasons you can rattle them off why people don't appreciate just how good Dallas is. One is the Dallas fans just don't want to give Deck Prescott a break anytime, but he's playing great. Another one is Mike McCarthy. Well, what are you going to do? But I think Dallas gets a hard time from fans and analysts and pundits. I think their record is not actually as good as it should be. Again, what are you going to do? That happens a lot with them, it seems, except it really doesn't. Over the last couple of years, they've played just about as well as they should have, with the exception of horrendous playoff losses. I think Dallas has put in it all together and is playing at a very high level, and this is a huge spread. But Dallas is capable of covering the spread.

Well, the spread, which we haven't mentioned yet, the spread is the Cowboys are favored by 11 points. The total right now is sitting at 48 and a half. Eleven is a lot. It's a lot to 11 on an NFL game. The League tends to play toward closer games. You've got- That's the.

Event- Maybe not on Thanksgiving, though, Jordan. Favorite's do extraordinarily well on Thanksgiving.

Well, you got two really interesting trends going up against each other. On the one hand, the Commanders have been really feisty as an underdog this year. They're five, one-in-one as a dog. So a lot to be said for them. But the Cowboys are as much of a front running team as I've seen in a while, their seven and one is a favorite this year. They're 23 and nine over the past three seasons. Here are the margin of victory of their seven wins, okay? 40, 20, 35, they won by three against the Chargers, then 23, 32, and 23. So six of their seven victories have come by six points or more. And while some of those teams are just dreadful, including the giants, twice, and the jets, you can see the recipe that works there. They have a potent offense. And if they get up early, especially the way their passing attack is playing now, they have the best pass rush in the League. So when they can pin their ears back and come after the quarterback, and by the way, we know Sam Howe is prone to taking sacks, these things can snowball very quickly.

Good pass rush versus turnovers. 14-nothing becomes 28-nothing. So as much as it goes against everything we stand for at the underdog podcast, and normally we are required to take underdogs, Peter, I think the second leg of this parlay has to be Cowboys minus 11. What do you think?

You can talk about all you want, the moxie that the commanders have shown, but their chief weakness... Leaving aside the turnovers, okay? Let's attribute part of the turnovers in the dreadful game last week to terrible Anybody can have one bad game or a couple of bad games, but their chief weakness is Dallas's key strength, which is that pass rush and protecting Howell. And Howell spends an awful lot of time in the pocket. Dallas steamrolls bad teams, and this team is not a good team.

Yeah. Look, I worry that we're going to overreact a little bit to how pathetic Washington looked against the worst team in football than New York giants last week. I'm not still bitter about losing my survival pic at all. That has nothing to do with this analysis.

Right. But the key there, Jordan, is Washington doesn't have to throw the ball away to be susceptible to what Dallas can do to dismantle them. You can wash away or control for whatever you want from last week's performance, they're still extraordinarily vulnerable to what Dallas does best.

Right. Look, again, just a little wary because they've shown themselves to be viable underdogs this year, especially against the Eagles. But that may just be a question of matchups, right? Styles make fights. I'm with you. I think this could snowball. So let's go Cowboys. Minus eleven is the second leg of the parlay, which takes us to the Nightcap. We've got the San Francisco 49ers traveling to the Seattle Seahawks. Currently, the Niners are favored by six and a half points on the road. The total sits at 43. It has moved down from, I think, 44 or even 44.5 when it opened. Looks like Gino Smith will play. But Peter, I know you've done some research on this front. Is there an area where you're leaning for our final leg? Well, Jordan.

When is the last time that you loosened your belt buckle and you're sitting there after a huge Thanksgiving feast, sat down and watched the Thanksgiving Night game and you got an amazing shootout, a 41-38 game? That does not happen. Thanks. Here's a cool stat. Thanksgiving Night Unders are 11 and five all time. I think.

We want to credit Brandon Anderson of the Action Network.

Brandon Anderson from the Action Network who says his favorite thing is to take the under on Thanksgiving night. It's part of a couple of broader trends. Prime time unders are 26 and eight after last week, this season after the Minnesota Broncos game that we just saw, and home underdogs over the last two years have gone 62 % to the under. These two teams haven't played yet this year, but last year they played to two low scoring games. Seattle lost 27-7 and 21-13. They play hard. They got a good defense. They keep things tight, but neither team ran up the score. You have a little concern that San Francisco is so good right now at this exact moment that they'll just start piling on points and drag the game over, basically all by themselves. But come on, we're concerned about Gino Smith's health. We're concerned that Kenneth Walker is hurt. All trends say under to me on this one.

Yeah, I mean, you're 100 % right. The only concern is that the Niner's can score 30 in their sleep. But maybe they score 30 and the Seahawks score 10. I like the trends. I like everything what it's pointing to. It's a divisional matchup. Who knows what the weather will be like in Seattle that night. There's certainly a case for the under, a strong enough one. By the way, have you have you bet a lot of unders, Peter? It's really fun to root for nothing to happen, to root for... It's a very different way to watch football.

It's a very different way to watch football. It's a little tense for me because something might always happen, but it's a reverse psychology fun. I'll tell you something else, Jordan, as I've explained this to you, this is very technical analysis. I've explained to you that in most cases with a parlay, you have to win all three legs of the parlay. Win the parlay. In this case, where we have... What do we have? Montgomery scoring a touchdown, right? We have Dallas, whatever.

That.

Was -11. -minus 70,000 points, whatever. And we have Seattle, San Francisco taking the under right now at 43. You only have to win one of those. Why? Because first of all, if you're blabbing about these picks to your family and you hit on one of them, just don't talk about the others. Say, Hey, I listen to these two goofballs and this one smart woman on this underdog podcast. I took their advice, marketed to the whole family. I hit on this one. Just don't even mention the other reason is because once you hit one, Jordan, all the rest is gravy. There it is.

If you're listening to this instead of watching our YouTube feed and be thankful for that, by.

The way- We're catching this on Armed Forces Radio Network. That's right.

You're not seeing Peter hold up a jar of gravy. He's also wearing a turkey tie. But if you can't separate dad jokes from actual betting advice, no, you actually have to hit all three legs of a parlay to win. But that won't stop you from making a.

Ridiculous crack. But you can still separate gravy.

All right. To reiterate, three legs of our parlay, you'll find it on DraftKings. Go check it out. David Montgomery anytime touchdown, Cowboys, Minutes, 11, Seahawks, 49ers, under, right now under 43. Before we move on to the next exciting part of our menu, I want to give you one other option for some added betting on Thanksgiving. I've been into teasers this year. If you don't know what teasers are, essentially the most standard form is a two-team teaser. And what you're doing is you're buying points, but you have to win both bets. So for instance, let's say you want to do two of the Thanksgiving games, okay? Then you want to take the Cowboys or -11 and let's say the lions were -seven and a half. What you do is you tease it and you get six points added to your total. So suddenly the lions line moves from seven and a half to one and a half, and the Cowboy's line moves from eleven to five. And the only difference is you have to win both to win. Normally these are offered, I think DraftKings typically offers them at about -120. If you add a third leg, which I think you can do here, you get plus odds.

I really like all of these three favorites. Again, this is the underdog podcast, but it's the one week of the year we're allowed to take favorites. I love all three of these teams as part of a teaser. First of all, generally you want us to be able to tease down below seven and three when you can. Those are key numbers. Stucky over at the Action Network has written some great stuff about this over the years. It's a good strategy, right? So what I love is like when you have a team that's plus eight and a half, or sorry, minus eight and a half, and you can tease them down to two and a half and you get through the touchdown and the field goal or the other way, right? You have a team getting two and a half and get it up to eight and a half. That's a nice way. Well, you're close with that on the Lions game and the Seahawks game. So you can take the Lions down to minus one and a half. I feel very strong that they will win and they will do so more than a point and a half.

And the same thing with the Niners. I like them to win on the road. Tease them from six and a half to half a point. And then finally you can do it with the Cowboys to get it under a touchdown, get it down from 11 to five. So I think definitely include the lions if you want to do a two team teaser. I think either of the other teams is acceptable, but have some fun. Do a three-team teaser, get plus money, give you something else to watch for. Peter, have you done teasers? And what do you think of this approach?

I have not done teasers. I am marginally confused. I am relying on your advice. This is one of those times where you know what we're talking about. I get what you're saying about the touchdown and the field goal numbers. Let me ask you one quick question. Yeah. Whatthat leads you to prefer teasers over just doing a couple of money line bets? If what you're really saying is you just really think Dallas is going to win by some margin.

Well, because the money line bet, I'm not getting as good odds in this case. Dallas is minus 600 on the money line. So if I hard laid them on the money line with Detroit, I'm not getting minus 120 odds. So yes, if they.

Win by- I think that's important to point out to people that there's value there in.

Picking- Right. You're paying for six points. If you're taking the cowboys on the money line, you're paying for eleven points. So, yes, I'm doing this for the odds. So, yes, if you have any questions, you can tweet us @jordinbrenner@peterkeating, N-J. And we're going to ask you for some more Twitter opinions coming up because we've got quite a draft to unveil. Underdog.

Underdog. Underdog.

Underdog. And we're back with The Underdogs, Peter. Our producer, Sarah McCrory, had a delicious idea for this segment. We're all excited for Thanksgiving, for the feast. Yes, the turkey is the supposed star, but we all know that the real fun comes from the side dishes. So what we're going to do is we are going to draft underdog side dishes. Sarah has removed the five most popular side dishes from our options. And Sarah, if you would read those off, please, so we know what not to take.

Okay.

The top five most popular side dishes for Thanksgiving are mashed potatoes, stuffing, Mac & Cheese, sweet potatoes slash yams, because I think those are the same thing, and green bean casserole. Green bean casserole, once the underdog of SIE dishes, now an overdog, as Peter would say.

It's made it up there. It became classic out of nowhere.

Okay, so here's what we're going to do then. Those are off the board. Peter, you can construct a team any way you like. Maybe you're just going to go for talent and don't care if they play the same position. Maybe you want to build a balanced plate that incorporates different components. This is up to us however we want to do it. Peter, I'm giving you the first pick. I will have the next two. Then you do two in a row and I have the last pick. So Peter, with the first pick in the Inaugural Thanksgiving under Dog's side dish draft, what are you taking?

With the number one pick, I'm taking turnips. Now, first of all, we often say our bets are a play on this or a play on that. This is a play against squash. Squash is aptly named. It's hard on the outside and it's squashy and squishy, and seeds are shooting out on your face when you bite into a piece of squash from the inside. Nobody wants squash, but you do want root vegetables, and you do want something that nobody's going to cook the entire rest of the year. Turnips are extremely tasty, great with pepper. But when the hell else are you going to get them? Only one day, Thanksgiving. Give me the turnips with the potatoes and the stuffed and the gravy. Harkening back the days when European settlers met Native Americans. I believe turnips is one of the things they actually shared. It's an original Thanksgiving dish. Give me the turnips.

You're aware that people are going to be voting on which plate is more delicious and you led with turnips.

Turnips are tasty and they make the plate more colorful and complete.

I'm off to a considerable lead, and I haven't even made a pick yet. But as we mentioned, we're going to ask you either on our comment section of our YouTube video or on Twitter, we're going to ask you to comment on who produced the better plate. And with that in mind, with my first pick, I'm going to go with creamed spinach.

Now look.

My wife, a vegetarian, will tell me there's nothing better than having all cheesy components on your plate. Now, I was a little worried that this would keep me from being able to take like a creamed corn. I don't care. I love creamed spinach. I love spinach. I love cream. I love the taste. I love the look, every aspect of it. I need the creamed spinach. So I'm starting off there. Now I can't go overboard on the dairy. So I need something that complements it a little bit. I need a starch without the mashed potatoes, without the ems. So with my second pick, I'm going to go with crispy potatoes. I saw a beautiful recipe for this, crispy potatoes with bay and scallions. Sounds delicious.

Wait, crispy potatoes on top of the mashed potatoes?

No, you can't have mashed potatoes. It's off the board.

You're creating a plate. But on your dinner plate. No, those five things are already good. They're going on. Those five things are already going to be there.

No, they're not. They've been ruled out of this contest.

Because they're already going to be on your.

Banquet table. No, they're.

Not on our table. This is why I'm asking you, I want to be clear. You're serving crispy potatoes instead.

Of mashed potatoes. Because there is no potato. Correct. Yes. Okay.

All right. Yes.

So they had a crunch, a different texture. They're not as terrible for you as a mashed tato. So we're going with my first two picks, cream spinach and crispy potatoes. Peter, you now have the next two picks to complete your plate.

I'm going to go with something else you might not like, Jordan, but which is a fine addition to this feast, onions. That's right. Usually talking about.

Pearl, onion. Wait, in what format?

A couple of raw onions? No, small pearl onions, either cooked by themselves or in a cream sauce. Traditionally, you can find them in a cream sauce. If you don't want to go this heavy on the cream, you got onions. You got the acidity and the bite of the onions cutting against all the rest of this blobby, Bayesian, creamy food. We have fantastic with mashed potatoes, with stuffed.

All right, you've got onions and turnips.

We have pearl onions. Oh, wait a minute. Yes, we do have pearl onions. Nothing better to serve them in than an onion-shaped dish. See, the onion is crying here because you cry when you cook onions. It's labeled onions. There you go.

All right, make your.

Third pick. Here's my onion-serving dish.

Before we get the hook here, let's go.

I'm going to go back to creamy, sweet, and tasty. With my final dish, we're going to go with corn pudding. That's right. Not just niblets, not corn on the cob. Look it up online. All you have to do is shave some cobs down, throw some milk in, put some sugar and stuff. You make an outstanding corn pudding. Easy recipe. Almost as easy as green bean casserole. So that's going to wrap it up for me.

So I had strongly considered for my final pick, potatoes of groton, but I already have a potato and I have a cheesy component.

It's just eating a potato dinner.

I thought about some cornbread or biscuits, maybe mushroom and leek, red pudding that my wife makes, and it's delicious. But with my third option, I want to complement this meal. I'm going to go with collard greens, preferably a garlic and parmisan green recipe that I read about online. He adds a little bite, complements the cream spinach and the potatoes. It's a beautiful look on the plate. So my plate again, the collard greens, the crispy potatoes, and cream spinach.

Peter- We got the turnips, onions, little pearl onions, and corn pudding.

All right. So we want you to do is to go on, again, Peter's wearing a turkey hat right now. We want you to go on YouTube, in our comments.

We'll take the turkey and we'll stay on. Tell us.

Who has the better plate. Or go on Twitter @jordynbrenner@peter, Keating, and Jay. We may even post an AI-rendered image of our plates. We want to know who created the more delicious plate. Sarah, do you have an early favorite right now before we go? Honestly, I wish I could combine some from both. Let's just say you guys aren't making my Thanksgiving dinner, so I'm feeling thankful for that. Well, on that note-.

Well, the good thing is at Thanksgiving, you can combine everything from all the plates. You know what you just have to do, Jordan? You just have to wing it.

Well, on that note, I'm thankful for you, Peter. I'm thankful for Sarah. I'm thankful for our executive producer, Nellie Lomon, who told us about something called pineapple cheese casserole that appears to originate from Alabama and supposedly is delicious. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back with you next week. Have a very happy Thanksgiving with your families and we'll see you soon.

Happy Thanksgiving.