Our expert NFL picks for Week 12 of 2022

Plus, and unexpected winner who rose from the ashes!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. We have an early edition of picks this week due to the holiday, and I hope this will allow you to look at us and have a much-needed distraction while you’re browsing your phone and desperately searching for a reprieve from your family.

I feel like a broken record at this point, but picks were off the rails again in Week 11. This season has been impossible to predict in so many ways, and that gave us one of the most incredible stories in expert picks this year. Ricky O’Donnell hasn’t had the best season overall — he’s been in last place three times this year, and suffered a lot of anti-Bears tweets in the process. However, in Week 11 he rose from the ashes like a phoenix to dominate with a power previously unseen.

Ricky basically channelled his beloved Justin Fields, that’s my working theory, and put in a 12-2 picks record to not only win the week, but turn in the best single-week record of anyone this year. It wasn’t remotely close either, with second place being 8-6. That means he gets to writer tweets for Mark Schofield and yours truly, as we tied for last — and I’ll add these in when Ricky is done traveling for the holidays and has settled on how he wants to humiliate us.

Here are the panel’s picks for Week 11. I hope you have a wonderful, happy, and joyous Thanksgiving with the ones you love — and we’ll see you next week.