Sports Handicapper Ricky Tran's Picks & Predictions

The Giants were almost shut out on prime time whereas the Lions dropped 35 points on the Cardinals as underdogs. The Lions earned that win, but they were playing a Cardinals team at home that played extremely bad. Clients will recall that was my 'Game of the Year' in fact, but I'm not one to dwell on the past and keep firing away at the same time, rather we learn from it and move on. What is important to take away is that the Lions didn't beat a great team in Week 1. The Cards offensive line didn’t look improved and their receivers once again were a complete no show. On top of that, Carson Palmer had a bad game with some terrible throws. On top of that, they lost their most valuable offensive player in the third quarter when David Johnson went down during a fumble. At that point, the Cards were actually leading the Lions 17-9 – with a Stafford pick-six. Palmer added a pick-six himself later. Kudos to the Lions, but it wasn’t that they controlled that game from start to finish.

New York played without their best offensive player and the offensive line got completely manhandled by the Cowboys front seven. With Odell on the field, you have a guy who cannot only beat every CB, he also is a great deep threat. You put your best CB on him but you cannot have Odell in single man coverage on one side of the field. You always have to shade a safety over the top. That puts Brandon Marshall into a much better matchup on the CB2 and opens up space underneath for Shepard, Engram and Vereen. On Monday we will get a completely different matchup, because the Lions line backing corps isn’t as smart as Sean Lee and Jaylen Smith and they are going to have a significantly worse wide receiver matchup than against the Cards. Slay will likely be put on Odell with safety help and Brandon Marshall likely gets Nevin Lawson who is 5’9″. Marshall is 6’5″. This is unfair. Marshall is gonna burn him in man coverage and I expect a very good stat line from Brandon Marshall. Vice versa, Odell should absolutely get the better of Lawson. Overall the Giants are going to have a much much better matchup offensively this week.

The Giants still have an elite defense despite what you saw Week 1. They held one of the best offenses to 19 offensive points (2016 avg: 26.7), 1 TD & 4 FGs on 9 drives. Now they get the Lions offense at home. With Matthew Stafford, the Lions are 2-23 SU on the road against teams that finish the season with a winning record. Since 2015, the Lions had 9 road games in open stadiums. They scored 28, 16, 10, 18, 24, 27, 14, 6, 6 points. That’s 16.4 PPG and they went 2-7 in those games. The Lions are going to have a hard time moving the ball on this Giants defense as they had last December when they scored 6 points at New York. They won’t win the battle in the trenches and Stafford's accuracy has never been good enough to hit receivers intermediate or deep in tight coverages. This offense will see a lot of 3 & outs and will have a very hard time in the red zone.

I think the line is a complete overreaction at this point and that the Lions is the clear public play.

New York Giants -3 (comfortable up to -4.5)