Last week, I placed my faith in the Texans at home against a Washington Commanders team I felt was ripe for a letdown game. Instead, Houston trailed for more than 58 minutes and Taylor Heinicke improved to 4-1 as a starter this fall without having to do much of anything.
The good news is this kept Houston in line to replace Davis Mills with a quarterback taken with the top selection in next spring’s NFL Draft. The bad news is it tanked my picks. Week 12 will bring a deluge of Thursday football thanks to Thanksgiving. It also brings a slate of uninteresting games after the holiday, with the exception of Bengals-Titans.
What once looked like playoff previews between the Rams and Chiefs or Packers and Eagles instead look like looming blowouts. As a result, our three-man panel made a bunch of mostly homogenous picks; we’re unanimous on all but two of Week 12’s 16-game lineup.
Here’s this week’s straight-up picks.
| Game | Christian | Robert | Charles |
| Bills at Lions | Bills | Bills | Bills |
| Giants at Cowboys | Cowboys | Cowboys | Cowboys |
| Patriots at Vikings | Patriots | Patriots | Patriots |
| Falcons at Commanders | Commanders | Commanders | Commanders |
| Bears at Jets | Jets | Jets | Bears |
| Bengals at Titans | Titans | Bengals | Titans |
| Broncos at Panthers | Broncos | Panthers | Broncos |
| Texans at Dolphins | Dolphins | Dolphins | Dolphins |
| Ravens at Jaguars | Ravens | Ravens | Ravens |
| Buccaneers at Browns | Bucs | Bucs | Bucs |
| Raiders at Seahawks | Seahawks | Seahawks | Seahawks |
| Chargers at Cardinals | Chargers | Chargers | Chargers |
| Saints at 49ers | 49ers | 49ers | 49ers |
| Rams at Chiefs | Chiefs | Chiefs | Chiefs |
| Packers at Eagles | Eagles | Eagles | Eagles |
| Steelers at Colts | Colts | Colts | Colts |
| Last week: | 8-6 | 10-4 | 9-5 |
| Year to date: | 101-62-1 | 99-64-1 | 89-74-1 |
And here are those selections in a better-formatted screenshot of our actual picks sheet, which unfortunately struggles to translate to our editing software.
