Thursday Night Football Pick

It's Thursday, and that means the NFL is back at us with the second of their recently new Thursday Night Football matchups that much of the country does not get to see due to not having the NFL Network. This Thursday's matchup sends the Miami Dolphins to the Carolina Panthers, and the Panthers are favored by 3 points as they have slowly crept up all week. 3 is an annoying number to have to get them at when I've been looking at this line all week, but in the end I'm still going to take the Carolina Panthers +3 vs. the Miami Dolphins for Thursday night in Carolina. Carolina is one of those teams that have quietly really improved since a very slow start, and now just sit a win or two out of the NFC playoff picture as I wrote earlier this week. Carolina has stepped it up in basically all positions since their 0-3 start, as Jake Delhomme has now not thrown an interception in three consecutive starts, DeAngelo Williams has run for 150 yards three times in his last five games (and just under 100 in the other two), and the team defense has basically held its last three opponents -- all solid offenses across the board in Atlanta, New Orleans and Arizona -- in check in going 2-1 over that span. Meanwhile, the Dolphins, a team that I like overall, have gone 1-3 on the road this season so far, with all three losses by double digits, and they have only scored more than 17 points once in four road attempts this season. Although the team has had a bit of a resurgence in its last four games under new quarterback Chad Henne, just this week the team announced that Ronnie Brown is on the IR and out for the season due to injury, and Brown is more than just the team's top runningback -- he is also the guy at the helm of the team's most common wildcat formation plays. That should really upset things a bit on the Miami offense, and this one seems like a touchdown win at least for the Panthers the way I see it.