Patriots rooting guide: Who New England fans should root for on Week 17 Thursday Night Football

Week 17 of the NFL season has arrived, and as usual the action will be kicked off with some primetime action.

This week’s edition of Thursday Night Football will feature the Dallas Cowboys visiting the Tennessee Titans in Nashville. What does the matchup mean from a New England Patriots point of view, though? Let’s find out.

Welcome to our first rooting guide of the week — and last one of the year 2022.

8:15 p.m. ET

Dallas Cowboys (11-4) at Tennessee Titans (7-8): Go... Titans? Despite this being a classic NFC vs. AFC battle, Tennessee is the team to root for — sort of. The idea behind rooting for the Titans, after all, has mainly to do with the worst-case scenario from a Patriots perspective: Cowboys-Titans has no impact on New England’s playoff chances, but in the unfortunate case that the team gets eliminated from postseason contention over these last two weeks of the season, it would be slightly better to have a team like Tennessee finish with a better record than New England. Why? Draft positioning. Using this point of view is why we are rooting for Mike Vrabel’s club tonight. | Amazon Prime, fuboTV

Make sure to head down to the comment section to discuss tonight’s game, and to check out this story stream for all of our coverage of the Patriots’ own Week 17 game against the Miami Dolphins.