NFL Week 12 Betting – Injured Pats, Broncos Meet in Denver

New England Patriots (-3, 43.5 o/u) at Denver Broncos

A potential AFC Championship preview is on tap for Sunday Night Football this weekend as the (Peyton Manning-less) Denver Broncos (8-2, 3-1 Home) host Tom Brady and the New England Patriots (10-0, 4-0 Away) at Mile High (8:30 PM Eastern).

Injuries robbed us of perhaps the last Brady vs. Manning battle. Now it will Brady vs. Brock Osweiler, which sadly, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The Patriots are filled with injuries from left to right. They’ve had to pull magic tricks to put a competent offensive line together for the last few games, and they are missing RB Dion Lewis and WR Julian Edelman for the rest of the regular season. The team also confirmed WR Aaron Dobson was heading to injured reserve because of a high-ankle sprain.

Brady – the NFL’s leading MVP candidate – has Danny Amendola and Rob Gronkowski as his only two familiar faces out there. Amendola, however, is dealing with a knee injury suffered against the Buffalo Bills last Monday and has been limited in practice.

“Yeah, we’ve lost a lot of guys, and we’ve lost quite a few guys over the last three weeks,” Brady said this week during the team’s press conference. “So I think we’ll just keep fighting and figuring out a way to win, and it’s good to win against a good defense. Any way you can get these wins, I think it’s a positive.”

The Denver Broncos will be without Manning for the next three weeks as he deals with a foot injury. In his first start at QB, Osweiler completed 20 of 27 passes for 250 yards and two touchdowns last week against the Bears and looked good enough.

“He did a really good job,” Broncos coach Gary Kubiak said to the Associated Press. “We didn’t protect him very good in the first half, had to take his lumps in a couple situations but kept his composure [and] would come back to make the next play. He did a heck of a job.”

Osweiler really doesn’t need to do much as his defense is the best in the NFL and could win any game any Sunday. The Broncos lead the league with 34 sacks this season and will go against a depleted Patriots offense line that’s in for a long night.

“We’ve got to block better. We’ve got to get open. We’ve got to run better,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said about his offensive line right after the 20-13 win over the Bills on Monday. “We’ve got to do everything better. It just wasn’t the kind of production or offensive performance we were looking for.”

The Broncos are 6-2 ATS in their last eight games following an ATS loss and 4-1 ATS in their last five games as an underdog of 0.5-3.0 points. The Patriots are 0-2-2 ATS vs. a team with a winning record and 2-9 ATS in their last 11 games on grass.

Pick: Broncos +3.

(Photo credit: Keith Allison (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)