Dan Johnson takes you through his preview, prediction, and pick for NFL Week 12’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Sunday night in Inglewood feels like a referendum on tiers. The Rams are chasing NFC seeding now, not survival—stacked near the top of the conference, trying to keep pace with San Francisco and Philadelphia in the race for a bye. Tampa flies in as the scrappy wild-card hopeful, hovering around that .500 line where every primetime result swings tiebreakers and jobs. Los Angeles has spent the first half of the year looking like a complete team again, with Stafford dealing and Kyren, Puka, and Davante closing drives; the Bucs have lived week-to-week on Baker answers and just enough defense. One profile feels like a January lock, the other like a team auditioning to stay in that conversation. Below is my prediction for NFL Week 12’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday Night Football.
Here’s how I’ll play it. I’ll be pumping out these predictions for individual games all season, with plenty of coverage here on DraftKings Network. Follow my handle @dansby_edits for more betting plays.
Matthew Stafford has the better ecosystem by a mile. Through ten games he’s completed 66.0% for 2,557 yards, twenty-seven touchdowns, two picks and 7.6 yards per attempt. His overall EPA sits firmly positive, then spikes from clean pockets—0.355 EPA per play, 58.0% success, 8.4 yards per attempt. Tampa blitzes on roughly 35% of snaps, yet their efficiency actually worsens when they send heat, and they live in zone almost 70% of the time. Stafford has punished those looks all year. Against zone he’s at 8.2 yards per attempt, and his play-action line—0.280 EPA and 8.4 yards per attempt on 128 attempts—matches perfectly against a defense allowing big play-action explosives.
The weapons turn that into structural integrity. Kyren Williams is on a heater: over his last three he’s handled 51 carries for 278 yards and four rushing scores, 5.5 yards per carry, plus three catches. Season-long he’s at 750 rushing yards and six scores with another three receiving touchdowns. Puka Nacua has become the drive engine—73 catches on 87 targets for 850 yards and four scores, with an 83.9% catch rate. Over his last three he’s gone 19-234-2, earning a 33.3% target rate on 66 routes and adding +18.4 EPA by himself. Davante Adams handles the knife work: only 43 grabs on the season but 569 yards and ten touchdowns, including 12-138-4 over the last three with seven red-zone targets and four red-zone scores. Tight ends Terrance Ferguson, Colby Parkinson, and Davis Allen stack the middle—Tyler Higbee is 7-69-1 over the last three and owns +24.57 EPA in that same stretch, while Parkinson has gone 8-65-2 on nine targets. Higbee, however, is on IR now for the next four games. Tampa’s zone-heavy structure has been weaker than its man looks and has bled play-action explosives. Stafford plus this trio of receiving layers and Kyren’s recent +0.51 EPA per touch is a brutal combination.
Baker Mayfield is playing competent ball but walks into a different animal. His season sits at 216 completions on 340 attempts, 2,365 yards, seventeen touchdowns, three picks and 7.0 yards per attempt. Tampa’s offense, though, settles at 0.030 EPA per snap and a 42.3% success rate. The Rams defense is living at -0.099 EPA allowed with only 323.0 yards surrendered per game and a 43.2% success rate allowed. Their pressure rate is essentially league average, yet the quality of it matters—over half their pressures hit in under 2.5 seconds. Interior disruption is the fulcrum. When those tackles win, opposing offenses sink to roughly -0.70 EPA per play and only 29.6% success. Baker’s own splits against interior pressure fall near -0.41 EPA with his time to throw stretching to 3.5 seconds. That is not creative scrambling; that is holding the ball while windows evaporate.
Buccaneers vs. Rams pick, best bet
Tampa’s skill pieces have flashed but carry more noise. Sean Tucker has surged lately—40 carries for 201 yards and three scores over the last three, plus a receiving touchdown. Rachaad White adds 33 carries for 124 yards and nine catches for 53 yards in that same window. Emeka Egbuka owns real juice—season-long 717 yards and six scores on 45 grabs at 15.9 yards per catch—but his last three games show 14-190-1 on 31 targets with slightly negative EPA. Cade Otton has seen 22 targets over the last three and turned them into 15-150, yet his route-level EPA is negative, a sign of volume over efficiency. Those players can absolutely pop individual drives, but they’re operating inside an offense that’s materially less efficient than the unit across from them and now faces one of the league’s most punishing interior rushes.
So what has to happen for Tampa to cover seven? Their blitz-heavy front has to win early downs and somehow avoid feeding Stafford the exact answers he’s already shown against zone and play action. They need those third-down fire zones to land clean, not turn into eight-yard crossers to Puka or seam benders to Ferguson. On offense, Baker has to survive fast interior pressure, dodge the -0.40 EPA skid that shows up whenever his guards and center lose, and lean into a horizontal game where Sean Tucker’s five yards per carry and Rachaad White’s 90% catch rate keep them ahead of schedule. Emeka Egbuka probably needs to cash one or two of those fifteen-plus yard shots, Cade Otton has to turn volume into actual EPA for once, and the red-zone split has to flip for a night against a Rams side that’s been relentlessly efficient inside the twenty.
Every stitch of data still pulls the other way. The Rams throw more efficiently, run hotter on the ground with Kyren’s +0.51 EPA per touch, and finish drives with Davante’s red-zone diet and Puka’s chain work instead of field goals. Their defense lives in negative EPA, generates quick interior wins, and keeps quarterbacks from bailing out through scramble-driven hero ball. Tampa needs a narrow, turnover-free, pressure-heavy script to keep this in field-goal territory; Los Angeles just needs to be themselves.
I still see more double-digit Rams wins than sweaty three-point escapes. I’m laying Rams -7 and calling it Rams 27, Buccaneers 17.
Best bet: Rams -7 (-110) vs. Buccaneers
Tail it with me in the DKN Betting Group here!
For a prop lean, with Higbee out, Colby Parkinson anytime touchdown at +450 is exactly the kind of correlated swing I want with Rams -7. Over the last three games he’s seen nine targets, caught eight of them for 65 yards and two touchdowns, and he’s been perfect in close—five red-zone targets, five catches, two scores. That’s not random tight-end noise, that’s Stafford trusting a six-foot-seven frame on condensed splits and play-action leak routes when they get inside the ten. Davante Adams and Puka Nacua tilt coverage, Kyren Williams is hammering four rushing scores in his last three, and defenses are forced to load up the box and squeeze outside leverage; Parkinson becomes the clean backside answer on boot, pop pass, and high-low in the end zone. In a game where I’m expecting the Rams to live in scoring position and finish drives, +450 feels light on how often he’s actually schemed as a finisher. I’m in at that number and would still ride it down to around +350.
Best prop lean: Colby Parkinson to score a touchdown (+450)
Tail it with me in the DKN Betting Group here!