Week 17 NFL Picks: Predictions and Advice for Season-Finale Vegas Odds

The Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions will be on center stage when they take the field Sunday night.

Nearly all NFL regular-season questions will have been answered by the time the two teams begin their battle at Ford Field in Detroit. 

The winner of the NFC North will be determined by this game, and it’s also possible that the NFC’s second wild-card team will emerge here as well.

The expectation is that the Green Bay Packers are streaking right now and that their five-game winning streak will become six games because quarterback Aaron Rodgers and his receivers are in sync, and the defense has straightened itself out after a brutal run midway through the season.

On the opposite side, the Lions have lost two games in a row to the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys after a very strong season that saw them build a 9-4 record earlier in December. The tendency is to say that these are the same, old Lions and that they will blow it with the season on the line.

But look at those last two opponents. The Cowboys have a 13-2 record, while the Giants’10-5 mark is tied with the Atlanta Falcons for the second-best record in the conference.

While the Lions were rather ordinary against the Giants, they stayed with the Cowboys punch for punch on the road in the first 30 minutes.

The Lions and Matthew Stafford may not disappear as many of the experts believe. Stafford has completed 65.5 percent of his passes this year with a 25-9 TD-interception ratio and he has three potentially dangerous receivers in Golden Tate, Marvin Jones and Anquan Boldin.

They are going up against a Green Bay defense that ranks 29th against the pass. The seeming improvement that the Packers have shown in recent wins over Seattle, Chicago and Minnesota will be tested against the …

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