Thursday Night Football Buffalo Bills vs New England Patriots NFL predictions, picks, odds & spreads from expert analyst Clevta

NFL Week 13 begins with the Buffalo Bills visiting the New England Patriots on Thursday Night Football at 8:15 pm ET on Amazon Prime Video. Our NFL expert, Clevta, has a best bet and predictions for the game.

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Clevta’s Buffalo Bills vs New England Patriots best bet: Bills -4.5 (-110)

The Bills come into this game having not covered in 5 straight. They did get a bit unlucky in not covering against Cleveland when the Browns scored on a meaningless final drive and then against Minnesota when the Vikings posted an incredible 4th-quarter comeback.

Let’s be honest; the Bills lines have been a bit inflated in general leading to this streak but this is the game that I believe the market has overreacted in the opposite direction. Let’s look at this with a recent market comparison for context. In Week 8 the Jets were +3 at home against New England and in Week 9 they closed at +10.5 at home against Buffalo. Of course, a few things have changed and you can argue the Bills are a bit worse now but in general this line should be closer to -5.5/-6 using this information. We are talking about a Bills team that closed at -2.5 in Kansas City earlier this season. To only have to lay 4.5 here I think is just flat wrong. I think we are finally getting the Bills at an attractive buy low spot.

We have zero proof that Bill Belichick can slow down Josh Allen and the Bills. If you exclude that extremely fluky hurricane level wind game from last season where the Bills were handcuffed on offense, the Bills have beaten New England by 30, 12, 29 points since late in 2020. Allen completely destroyed the Pats in Week 16 and again in the wild-card round last year. He had 2 of the best EPA performances by any QB in 2021 in those games. He posted his best (wild-card game) and 3rd-best (Week 16) performances for him last year against New England. 

New England’s defense ranks #1 in EPA but I think this Patriots defense is completely fraudulent when you examine it a bit further. The last 2 seasons have shown that they demolish poor offenses/QBs so much that completely inflates how mediocre they really are. This defense held poor/mediocre QBs in Jared Goff, Zach Wilson, Sam Ehlinger and Jacoby Brissett to their team’s worst or 2nd-worst offensive EPA performance all season. Against Detroit (without D’Andre Swift and most of the WR corps in an outdoor Jared Goff game), the Jets and the Colts, the Patriots held those offenses to 3 of the 6 worst EPA games of any team the entire season. At the same time, they allowed good offenses like the Vikings, Bears and Ravens to post a top-4 offensive performance for those teams this season and the Ravens and Bears both posted their 2nd-best offensive game all season against this Patriots defense. We saw something very similar last year, as well. New England’s defensive capabilities are clearly bucketed based on level of the opponents’ offense. 

We saw Mac Jones play probably his best game of the season last week, but that was against a Vikings secondary dealing with multiple CB injuries and one that ranks dead last in yards per attempt allowed on the season. It was also in a controlled environment in the dome which helps a weaker-armed QB like Jones. Now he has to go back outdoors, where the wind shouldn’t be horrible but there could be gusts near 35 mph. And he will be facing a Bills defense that will get a full allotment of snaps out of star CB Tre’davious White after his 15 snap season debut last week. The Bills do lose Von Miller, but they should get Greg Rosseau back at DE to help lessen that blow. Jones has not been good this year and last week was only the 2nd positive EPA performance all season for him. The other positive EPA game came against a Steelers defense without TJ Watt and one that ranks 27th in yards per attempt allowed through the air. This Bills defense sits 10th in ypa allowed and 7th in DVOA against the pass. It’s Jones’ stiffest test all season outside of the 2 games against the Jets, in which he produced -0.08 and -0.03 EPA per drop-back performances. With RB Damien Harris out for this game, I think this is a tough matchup for Jones.

Don’t miss our Bills vs Patriots Same Game Parlay — we had 5 SGP wins last week!

Clevta’s best prop bet: Josh Allen, QB, BUF Over 43.5 rush yards

The Patriots have been atrocious in defending mobile QBs the last few years and this season is no exception. They gave up 14-82 yards and 11-107 yards to the only two mobile QBs they have faced this season in Justin Fields and Lamar Jackson. I talked about this a few weeks ago when I had the Bears +9.5 on MNF against the Patriots. Belichick and even Nick Saban defenses struggle against mobile QBs because their defenses are so well trained that they perform like robots. They are very smart players on defense and know exactly what spots they should be in and are so well prepared. However, when plays break down, QBs scramble or even on designed runs, they struggle because those plays are out of structure and the defense is less athletic than most and are not able to slow down those QBs. It happens time in and time out. In fact, in Allen’s last 3 games against NE he has rushed for 66, 64 and 39 yards. He also typically does not run the ball a ton in games that are blowouts or against inferior opponents unless he has to. This is the type of game in which he clearly will want to do to that more often. He has cleared this mark in 7 of 11 games this season and in a must-win division showdown against a defense that can’t slow down running QBs, I think this number is light.

Don’t miss Prop Holliday’s best player prop bets for Bills vs Patriots

Clevta has been a successful NFL handicapper for over a decade. His approach is a combination of bottoms-up fundamental team and matchup analytics along with a deep knowledge of the betting market to help drive success.

He has been a regular contestant in the Westgate NFL Supercontest and Circa Millions, where he has posted an aggregate 56% winning percentage, including four separate seasons with a win percentage of at least 60%. Now he brings his expert NFL handicapping skills to Pickswise.

You can find more of Clevta’s weekly NFL game analysis at ClevAnalytics.com.

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