After a thrilling Week 1 show, Thursday Night Football returned in Week 2 with a letdown. The first six drives resulted in three points, two punts, two turnovers and a missed field goal. We got some offense afterward, but not without plenty of mistakes by both teams. With the struggling New York Giants visiting the electric San Francisco 49ers, another bad show is in store for viewers this week. Let’s dig into Thursday’s Giants-49ers betting odds as we make our predictions and pick the best NFL Week 3 bet!
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Giants-49ers Pick & Betting Prediction | NFL Week 3
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Thursday Night Football Odds
Odds via FanDuel Sportsbook
Giants: +410 | 49ers: -550
Giants +10: -105 | 49ers -10: -115
Over 44: -115 | Under 44: -105
Giants-49ers Pick & Prediction
The San Francisco 49ers will host the New York Giants on Thursday Night Football. They are 10-point favorites for this one in what projects to be an ugly game. The Giants are a bad 1-1 with a blowout loss to the Cowboys and a near-loss to the Cardinals. The 49ers are an impressive 2-0 with a double-digit win over the Steelers and what should’ve been a double-digit win over the Rams. The advanced stats back up how good San Francisco is relative to New York — the 49ers are a strong third in my weighted expected points added (EPA) rankings, clocking in almost 1.5 standard deviations above the league average, while the Giants are a bad 30th and are almost 1.5 standard deviations below it.
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New York’s loss to Dallas was somewhat excusable, but the near-loss to Arizona was not. The Cowboys may have the NFL’s best defense this year, but the Cardinals have a thoroughly below-average one. They rank 17th in EPA per play allowed through two games despite playing against mediocre quarterback-offense combinations in Sam Howell-Washington and Daniel Jones-New York. With Saquon Barkley now sidelined for multiple weeks, the Giants are cooked — Barkley has accounted for 25.4% of the team’s yards from scrimmage and 50% of their touchdowns. It’ll be interesting to see head coach Brian Daboll’s gameplan for Thursday’s Giants-49ers game.
Meanwhile, the 49ers come in off a big win over the Rams that saw them give up an early lead before scoring 17 straight points. Their defense coughed up more yards than I expected to Matthew Stafford and the shorthanded Rams, but the unit still ranks third in EPA allowed per play. They rank worse against the run than the pass in the metric, but they’ve faced a very small sample of rushing attempts, so I’m not putting too much stock into that. Opposing teams have thrown the ball against them 76.9% of the time. With the Giants likely starting Matt Breida, expect another heavy dose of passing attempts from New York.
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I don’t want to play the under for a few reasons, but I’m willing to tease the spread down to pair with the under on New York’s team total to make a Giants-49ers parlay bet. Sure, playing on Thursday Night Football after a short week is rough for any defense, but San Francisco coughed up just 13 points to the Seahawks on Thursday last year. They’ll face one of the league’s worst offenses and a quarterback who is an atrocious 1-10 in primetime games. Jones is averaging 4.7 net yards per attempt (NY/A) with five interceptions for every four touchdowns in primetime. The 49ers should win by at least four, and the Giants won’t put up more than 18 points. New York has averaged 18.2 points per game with Jones but without Barkley since 2020.
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Giants-49ers NFL Week 3 Pick: San Francisco -3.5/New York Under 18.5 -120 at DraftKings
