The Detroit Lions won their tenth straight game and ended their wait for a Thanksgiving victory, defeating the Chicago Bears 23-20.

Detroit have hosted a Thanksgiving game every year since 1934, but this was their first victory on the American holiday since 2016.

The Lions, who have tied their franchise record by winning 11 of their 12 games this season, lead 16-0 at halftime and 23-7 after three quarters.

Chicago made it a three-point game with five minutes and 36 seconds left, but sloppy clock management on the visitors’ final possession allowed Detroit to hold on.

Jared Goff connected with Sam LaPorta for two touchdowns and passed for 221 yards as the Lions outgained the Bears 279-53 in a one-sided first half.

Although Chicago rallied to set up a tense finale, the Bears could not find the points required in the closing stages, failing to use their final timeout as their losing run extended to six games.

The Lions’ 10-game win streak matched the team’s 90-year record from their first season in Detroit in 1934.

The Thanksgiving schedule continues with the New York Giants at the Dallas Cowboys (Thu, 21:30 GMT).

The Miami Dolphins visit the Green Bay Packers (Fri, 01:20 GMT), while the Las Vegas Raiders go to the Kansas City Chiefs (Fri, 20:00 GMT).

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Why do the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys play football on Thanksgiving every year?

Thanksgiving and the NFL are strongly linked together and watching football on this holiday has become an American tradition.

Each year the league holds three games and they’re all considered to be primetime games as the viewership in Thanksgiving is through the roof.

Despite there not being an official contract or agreement between the NFL and the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys, these two teams play each year on Thanksgiving since many decades ago, with the Lions nearing almost a century of playing during the holiday.

Why do the Lions and Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving?
Having NFL games played on Thanksgiving is something that the league owes to the Detroit Lions, who started the tradition in 1934, after their owner George A. Richards wanted to attract more fans and the stadium begun being sold out for the holiday game ever since, proving to be a genius marketing move.

Despite other teams having played before on Thanksgiving, Detroit managed to cement their tradition given that the team also had secured a network deal with NBC to broadcast this game across almost one hundred stations in the United States.

The Cowboys started playing regularly on Thanksgiving in 1966 in a move to get more national publicity, setting record breaking crowds for their games in the following years, the only two years they haven’t played on Thanksgiving since that year was in 1975 and 1977.

The only NFL team yet to play on a Thanksgiving game is the Jacksonville Jaguars, who’ve never been scheduled for this holiday prime time slate.