NFL bold predictions and best bets for Week 13, plus breaking down Cowboys’ wild win over Seahawks

For most of the season, the Thursday night game hasn’t offered very much excitement, but that changed last night with the Cowboys beating the Seahawks 41-35 in one of the wildest shootouts of the year. The two teams combined for 76 points, making it the fourth-highest scoring game of the 2023 season.

This is where we usually hand out grades, but there’s a lot to go over here, so we’re going to break down the game instead: 

• Dak attack. The Cowboys QB was named the NFC’s Offensive Player of the Month for November before the game even started on Thursday and he celebrated that by going off against the Seahawks. Prescott threw for 299 yards and three touchdowns and more importantly, he led three key scoring drives during the fourth quarter. The Cowboys were trailing 35-27 with 12 minutes left in the final quarter, but they outscored the Seahawks 14-0 over that final span. Prescott’s favorite target was Ceedee Lamb, who caught 12 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown in the game. Dak also seemed to have a connection with Jake Ferguson, who caught six passes for 77 yards and a TD. Dak  finished the month of November with 16 TD passes, which is the fifth-most in NFL History by any QB in a single month. 
• Cowboys defense finally shows up in the fourth quarter. After getting steamrolled for 28 points and 322 yards through the first three quarters, the Cowboys defense finally came up with some big plays during the fourth quarter. The Cowboys were able to shut out the Seahawks over the final 14 minutes of the fourth quarter and a big reason for that is because they stopped Seattle cold on THREE different fourth-down attempts. The final stop came on a fourth-and-2 with just over one minute left to play when Micah Parsons forced Geno Smith into making an errant throw that sealed the Cowboys win (You can see the play here). The Seahawks actually left Parson unblocked ON PURPOSE on the play, and not surprisingly, that didn’t work out for them. 
• DK Metcalf goes off on DaRon Bland. The Seahawks receiver went off on Bland, who has been one of the NFL’s best corners this year. Metcalf caught six passes for 134 yards and three touchdowns in the game. In the first half alone, Bland gave up five catches for 137 yards and one TD when he was on coverage. Although he had a rough half, he did bounce back with an interception in the second half. As for Metcalf, he had a quiet second half that saw him catch just three passes for 28 yards.   
• Seahawks are unclutch in the fourth quarter. The Seahawks offense came up with multiple big plays during the first three quarters, but their magic seemed to run out in the fourth quarter. Geno Smith had a huge day, throwing for 334 yards while also totaling four touchdowns (three passing, one rushing), but he had two huge fourth-down incompletions in the fourth quarter that killed Seattle’s chances of winning. 
• No punts for either team. This game actually made history and that’s because it was just the fifth regular-season game ever with ZERO punts (You can see a list of all the no-punt games here). Bryan Anger and Michael Dickson both got the day off. With the loss, the Seahawks became the first team in the Super Bowl era to lose a game where they scored at least 35 points AND didn’t punt. Teams had been a combined 64-0 in that situation before Thursday. This also marked the first time that Pete Carroll had ever suffered a loss with the Seahawks in a game where Seattle scored at least 35 points (he was 36-0 going into Thursday). 
• Refs almost ruin the game. As exciting as the game was, it also dragged at times due to the fact that there were 19 PENALTY FLAGS thrown. The two teams were penalized a combined 257 yards in the game, which stands as the highest total in the NFL since the start of the 2022 season. The only upside is that the refs didn’t seem to play favorites in this game. The Seahawks were penalized for 130 yards while the Cowboys were hit with 127 yards in penalties. 
• Home sweet home. The Cowboys have now won 14 straight games at home and the most impressive part is how they’re doing it. They’ve now scored at least 40 points in four straight home games, which is tied for the longest streak in NFL history. The Cowboys are also just the third team in NFL history to score at least 30 points in their first six home games of the season. 

If you want to check out more of our takeaways from the game, be sure to click here. Also, there were a lot of crazy stats from this game and we covered them all here. 

3. NFL flexes a Monday night game for the first time

This marks the first season that the NFL has been allowed to flex Monday night games and the league has finally decided to utilize its new power. The NFL made some major scheduling changes for Week 15 that we’re going to cover below. 

When the schedule came out in May, the NFL designated a total of five games that could be moved to fill the three Saturday spots in Week 15 and the three games below were chosen.

Saturday, Dec. 16 (All games on NFL Network)

• Vikings at Bengals, 1 p.m. ET
• Steelers at Colts, 4:30 p.m. ET
• Broncos at Lions, 8:15 p.m. ET

The two games that didn’t make the Saturday cut — Falcons at Panthers and Bears at Browns — will both be played at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday, Dec. 17. 

Now, let’s get to the Monday flexing. Originally, we were supposed to get Chiefs at Patriots on Monday night in Week 15, but New England is so bad this year that the NFL is flexing PATRICK MAHOMES out of Monday night. 

The new Monday game will be Eagles at Seahawks, which will kick off at 8:15 p.m. ET on Dec. 18. As for the Chiefs-Patriots game, it will now be played at 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 17. 

This will probably be the only time we see the Monday flex used this year. As a matter of fact, we’ll probably only see one more flex this year and that will come in Week 18 when the NFL picks two games for the Saturday doubleheader and one game for the season-ending Sunday night game. 

4. NFL Week 13 picks: Broncos and Titans both pull off upsets