2022 NFL picks, score predictions for Week 12

Denver Broncos (3-7) at Carolina Panthers (3-8)

Sunday, November 27, 1:00 ET

Looking around the NFL, there’s probably not a matchup of two teams in the league this coming weekend that are more in “evaluation mode” than this game between the 3-7 Denver Broncos and the 3-8 Carolina Panthers.

While some expected the Panthers to be bad this year given their QB position, most people expected the Denver Broncos to be much better for the same reason. For the last couple of years, the Denver Broncos have been just a “quarterback away”, but as it turns out, it’s a bit more complicated than that. The Broncos hired Nathaniel Hackett away from the Green Bay Packers in the offseason, and Hackett has not been impressive as a head coach.

He’s already given up game management duties and now has relinquished play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak. What exactly do you do around here, Nate?

The Broncos enter this week’s road matchup against the Panthers as one of the NFL’s most pathetic offenses in the modern football era. They are barely averaging two scores per game right now and have still somehow been involved in one-score games every single week.

For a while, I was anticipating some “get-right” games for the Broncos but that hasn’t happened. Thankfully for Denver, the Panthers are kind of just as big of a mess right now. They have no long-term solution at QB, they traded Christian McCaffrey, they fired their coach in-season, and their present roster is going to look a lot different in the next five or six months.

Still, just like Nathaniel Hackett said before his team’s loss to the Raiders on Sunday, “somebody’s got to win this game.”

Prediction: Broncos win 22-16