Week 12 NFL Picks: Against-the-Spread Predictions for Entire Schedule

Sadly, we're getting to the point in the NFL season where our Sundays burrowed away from family members and huddled around televisions are dwindling. With the Week 12 slate just days away, only five more weeks of regular-season human carnage remains...before we get to the few more weeks in January and February.

Phew. Never mind. Still plenty of football left. 

But as the 2013 regular season draws ever closer to the finish line, it's becoming increasingly difficult to make money off woebegone bookmakers. Vegas has at least a 10-game sample for every team in the league at this point, which is about as close as you're going to get to being significant.

We've known the Broncos were good and the Jaguars bad since Week 1, but we now know just how big a chasm exists between those teams. The murky middle is also starting to shake itself out. Within a couple Sundays, it'll be hard to find anything of value on the boards. We'll all be stuck doing four-team parlays and ripping our hair to shreds just to get a few bucks here in there.

So it's important to cherish the small amount of time left with some room for error With that in mind, here is a complete breakdown of how the Week 12 NFL schedule will play out.

Away Team	Home Team	Spread	Pick
New Orleans Saints	Atlanta Falcons	NO -7.5	Saints
Pittsburgh Steelers	Cleveland Browns	CLE -2.5	Steelers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	Detroit Lions	DET -9.5	Lions
Minnesota Vikings	Green Bay Packers	GB -3	Packers
Jacksonville Jaguars	Houston Texans	HOU -10	Jaguars
San Diego Chargers	Kansas City Chiefs	KC -4.5	Chiefs
New York Jets	Baltimore Ravens	BAL -3.5	Ravens
Chicago Bears	St. Louis Rams	STL -1	Bears
Carolina Panthers	Miami Dolphins	CAR -3.5	Panthers
Indianapolis Colts	Arizona Cardinals	ARI -1	Cardinals
Tennessee Titans	Oakland Raiders	OAK -1.5	Titans
Dallas Cowboys	New York Giants	NYG -2.5	Giants
Denver Broncos	New England Patriots	DEN -2.5	Patriots
San Francisco 49ers	Washington Redskins	SF -4.5	49ers

The Best of Week 12

Early Games: San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs (-4.5)

Boy howdy, there are some craptastic 1 p.m. games on this week's slate. On a good week most of these contests would be relegated to the smallest television in the bar—and that's only because the annoying 42-year-old wearing his replica jersey and face paint wouldn't shut up about it.

I'm not sure what world you live in, but mine will be spent thanking the dear heavens I can watch the NFL RedZone channel over three hours of Steelers-Browns. As a matter of fact, getting pelted with a paintball gun repeatedly for three hours sounds better than that fate.

Luckily, the AFC West again comes through with a game approaching watchability.

The Chiefs, now sitting in the AFC's fifth seed despite a 9-1 record, host the still-alive Chargers at Arrowhead in a game that means a ton for both sides' playoff hopes.

Kansas City will have a good shot at reclaiming the division crown with Denver playing New England on Sunday night, and home-field advantage may mean more to them than any team this side of Seattle. Andy Reid and Co. have to feel like they left a game on the table, and Alex Smith will look to rebound after a quietly dreadful Week 11 performance.

San Diego, meanwhile, has lost three straight games and is only being kept alive in the playoff race via respirator. Philip Rivers is slowly trending downward after a stellar start, throwing for just six touchdowns over the Chargers' past five games. Rivers and Co. have also made a habit of killing themselves with late mistakes, whether it be getting stuffed three times at the goal line against Washington or their 10-penalty day versus Miami on Sunday.

It's understandable that the oddsmakers are a little wary of Kansas City after such a huge loss, but the Chiefs are more than 1.5 points better than the Chargers on a neutral field. Their defensive pressure should be able to coax some Bad Philip out of Rivers, and San Diego's defense is a mess by any metric. 

That should be enough to score a victory by at least a touchdown.

Score: Chiefs 24, Chargers 16

Late Afternoon: Indianapolis Colts at Arizona Cardinals (-1)

Hey, I didn't say all the week's best games would be fun to watch. Just that they're better than the rest of the ho-hum slate. Following this guide, you would be following a game where you watched Alex Smith play quarterback with one where Carson Palmer did the same minutes later.

Paintball isn't sounding like such a bad idea now, is it?

But should you consign yourself to a Sunday afternoon of football, Cardinals-Colts could be a nice chance to check in on where our Andrew Luck hype stands.

After the Colts defeated the Broncos in Week 7, there were some who were understandably starting the Luck-for-MVP push. At that time he was putting up beautifully efficient numbers, had victories over three Super Bowl contenders under his belt and had seemingly waxed all 2012 concerns about his propensity for interceptions.

Things have teetered a bit since then. The Colts are 7-3 and can rest players already due to their cavernous lead in the AFC South, but some cracks are starting to show. They got waxed by the St. Louis Rams in Week 10 and then needed to come back from a 17-3 deficit against the Tennessee Titans last Thursday, who happened to be playing without Jake Locker.

And this week comes arguably Luck and Co.'s biggest offensive test yet. Led by Defensive Player of the Year candidate Patrick Peterson and the surprising Tyrann Mathieu, Arizona has arguably the best secondary in the league. The Cardinals have picked off 14 passes (tied for third in NFL) and grade out among the best defenses in the league metrically. Football Outsiders' DVOA puts Arizona second in the NFL and they've even at times topped those rankings

This takes great importance because Trent Richardson might be a corpse. He hasn't had a run longer than eight yards in over a month, has averaged four yards per carry in just one game all season and has generally suffocated the Indianapolis offense every time he touches the ball. Donald "Dammit Donald!" Brown has even eclipsed him from most outsiders' perspectives. 

But with the Colts all-in on the Richardson experiment—as one typically is when one trades a future first-round pick on a running back—it'll very likely be up to Luck to win it. I'm not sold that he can.

Score: Cardinals 23, Colts 20

Prime Time: Denver Broncos at New England Patriots (+2.5)

This is what you all been waiting for, ain't it? What people pay paper for dam...whoops. Sorry. Got lost in Graduation-era Kanye West there for a second.

So, yes. This is the game of the week, and there's not even really a second place. Which, frankly, is just about always the case when Peyton Manning and Tom Brady share a football field. NBC has already started prepping the sports media and fans with what they expect to be a ratings bonanza, even titling the game Manning-Brady XIV in promos.

I'm sure you all will see many click-bait columns on the subject here in the coming days. Manning and Brady are the best two quarterbacks of their generation and two of the greatest five or so of all time. You'll hear about Brady's three rings and 9-4 record over Manning in Boston. You'll hear about how Manning has been unquestionably the superior quarterback this season in Denver. You'll contemplate throwing yourself off a local bridge by Thursday.

We know who Brady and Manning are at this juncture, and that barring some catastrophe that this will be a close game. But this game will more than likely be decided by the players who aren't Manning or Brady—and how they affect the players who are Manning and Brady.

New England's Week 10 bye couldn't have come at a better time. Rob Gronkowski and Danny Amendola, who have been good but limited in their returns to the lineup, may even be approaching 100 percent come kickoff. 

Brady's season has been plagued with the inconsistencies of his young pass-catchers, resulting in easily his worst season as a starter. But the Patriots started to get things going in their Week 9 drubbing of Pittsburgh and should find success against a Denver secondary that will likely lack Champ Bailey and Rahim Moore.

Meanwhile, Manning might be losing his answers to Gronkowski and Amendola. Tight end Julius Thomas suffered a knee injury and Wes Welker was concussed in Denver's victory over the Chiefs, leaving their statuses going into Sunday up in the air. With the Patriots defense proving ever resourceful and boasting one of the league's best cover corners in Aqib Talib, this game has all the makings of Brady going 10-4 against his rival.

Score: Patriots 34, Broncos 31

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