No matter if you are a fan of professional football or not, NFL football on Thanksgiving is tradition. The NFL has played at least one game on Thanksgiving since its inception in 1920. The 2023 Thanksgiving slate of three games all feature divisional matchups out of the NFC and all have playoff implications, so it should be a fascinating day of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and grown men tackling one another!

Here are picks for each of the three contests on Turkey Day 2023!

Packers@Lions (12:30 p.m. EST, FOX)

The Detroit Lions have hosted a game on Thanksgiving every year since 1934. For most of the last two decades, those games have not had much meaning to them for Detroit, as the Lions have mostly been seen as a tire fire of an organization. However, after a 1-6 start in 2022, the Lions have won 15 out of their last 19 ball games. They come into Turkey Day with a record of 8-2 and easily on top of the NFC North division. They’re primed to host their first playoff game in Detroit since 1993 come January.

A big reason for their turnaround has been Dan Campbell, who was hired as the Lions head coach in 2021. Campbell, a former tight end for the Lions, has a “tough guy” aspect to him. His opening press conference was one of the most controversial in recent memory when he claimed his team was going to “bite kneecaps off”. The eye-opening statement set a tone for the new-look Lions and led by quarterback Jerad Goff -- who is playing the best football of his career after taking the Los Angeles Rams to the Super Bowl in 2018 before being traded to Detroit three seasons later -- the Lions are a darn good football team. They run the football effectively, and they wear you out on the line of scrimmage.

For the Packers, they had a more than 30-year run of top-tiered quarterback play, as they went from having Hall of Famer Bret Farve for 16 seasons to having future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers for 15 seasons (18 total) as their starting quarterbacks (Rodgers sat behind Farve for three years). Now, Rodgers has departed to the New York Jets, and Green Bay, Wis., has been left with Jordan Love, a fourth-year signal caller out of Utah State who sat behind Rodgers for three seasons just like Rodgers did behind Farve.

However, Love is not Rodgers, and Green Bay has struggled to move the ball consistently. In Week 4 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Detroit took a 27-3 lead on their rivals going into halftime and held on for a 34-20 victory, though the result was never in doubt.

The Lions are really comfortable at home, and they’re more talented than the Packers, words that have rarely been typed by sports writers worldwide over the years.

Brandon’s Pick: Lions

Commanders@Cowboys (4:30 EST, CBS)

Two old-school NFC East oppositions will collide in the second window of the day. Dallas has hosted a Thanksgiving bout since 1966 (outside of 1975 and 1977). The Cowboys, known as America’s Team, are the same team they are essentially every season since the last time they won a Super Bowl in 1995: They beat up on the bad teams and can’t hang with the good ones.

Washington is somewhere in the middle. They have some talent, specifically on the defensive line and at wide receiver, but the NFL is a quarterback-driven league and Sam Howell is a second-year player for the Commanders, and you never know how he will play. When he’s on, he can go toe-to-toe with almost anybody. When he’s off, it’s a disaster. Going into Week 12, he leads the NFL in passing yards.

Washington always plays Dallas tough. The matchup that concerns me if you’re a Commanders fan is the Washington offensive line vs the Dallas defensive line. NFL games are won in the trenches, and the Cowboys have one of the best defensive fronts in football while Sam Howell has been sacked the most out of any starting QB so far this season.

If Washington can protect, they can pull off the upset. I expect this game to be the closest of the three games during the day. In the end, Dallas has been dominant at home, winning their last 12 games at AT&T Stadium by an average of 18 points per game. The streak extends to 13 games here.

Brandon’s Pick: Cowboys

Niners@Seahawks (8:30 p.m. EST, NBC)

Lumen Field in Seattle, Wash., is one of the loudest and toughest environments to play in all of football. However, the matchup here is not great for Seattle, as San Francisco has Pro Bowl-caliber players in every unit on their team (outside of quarterback). Last year, these two teams played three times, and San Francisco won all three. I expect the trend to continue in the Turkey Day nightcap in primetime.

For the Seahawks, Geno Smith has been a fairytale story. He was a second-round pick that did not work out for the New York Jets way back in 2013. After journeying his way through the league, in 2022, he got his chance to start for the Seahawks after he took over for long-time starting QB Russell Wilson, and he shined, leading the league in completion percentage. What we learned about the former West Virginia product is he can manage a game; he’s not a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

The same can be said about Brock Purdy, the last pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, aka Mr. Irreverent, aka the Niners starting quarterback, who took the league by storm last year after not losing a game he started and finished.

This season, after a 5-0 start, San Fran lost three in a row before dismantling Jacksonville and Tampa Bay in Weeks 10 and 11. San Francisco has a lot of great skill position players, and Purdy is playing to his strength. Combined with their defensive line -- which has three Pro Bowl players on it -- I think San Francisco beats Seattle into submission. Seattle is a playoff team and a solid team. They’re just a rung behind their arch-rivals from the NFC West, similar to Washington and Green Bay when it comes to the Lions and Cowboys.

Smith suffered a shoulder injury in Week 11 against the Los Angeles Rams, and even though he came back for the final drive, he is questionable to play Thursday, making it even tougher for the Seahawks.

Brandon’s Pick: Niners