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"  Things to expect on the last Thursday in November: Enough tryptophan to sedate a large neighbor, your uncle enjoying a few too many scotches, and NFL football, in Detroit and Dallas, that&amp;#039;s less entertaining than watching your uncle after eight scotches. Last year did feature a 30-27 barnburner between the Saints and the Cowboys, and the Lions are pretty good again, but all too often Thanksgiving Day lends itself toward the merciless. Which tends to leave you watching a too-long pre-game segment about some offensive lineman&amp;#039;s menu for the rest of his team, with your uncle, and hungry. So going on five years now, the NFL has been nice enough to provide an evening matchup between, well, more than halfway decent teams. On Thursday, it&amp;#039;s San Francisco at Baltimore \u2014 not that the Ravens are embracing the food part, exactly. Despite the Charm City&amp;#039;s comeuppance in the restaurant world, Ray Lewis and company will be working around the dinnertime kickoff, lest the whole lethargy thing kick in.  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s a team dinner because we&amp;#039;re the late game,&amp;quot; Ravens Pro Bowl fullback Vonta Leach told Eat Like a Man, &amp;quot;but a lot of guys are celebrating with their families on Friday.&amp;quot; This year marks the first Thanksgiving appearance for both the Ravens and Leach, but when he played for the Texans from 2006 to 2010, Leach would head to the team chaplain&amp;#039;s place in Houston for turkey and ham \u2014 although he&amp;#039;s more of a fried-turkey-and-ham kind of man. Leach is from pulled-pork country, in Lumberton, North Carolina, where you do your sauces vinegar-based, and your corn bread a little crispy, and your fried things a little... look, there are rules involved here: &amp;quot;You gotta have sweet potato fries and fried turkey,&amp;quot; Leach says. &amp;quot;Definitely not regular turkey.&amp;quot; Of course, more difficult than holding off on the meal of the year because you have to play in a primetime NFL game is holding off on that meal while you play against someone who plays in the NFL. If Leach family tradition tells us anything, it&amp;#039;s that drunk uncles have got another thing coming in the backyard. &amp;quot;First we eat while the game&amp;#039;s on, then we all nap, then we eat again, and then we go outside and play.&amp;quot; PLUS: Eat Like a Linebacker and More Thanksgiving Advice &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a11825/ravens-thanksgiving-game-2011/>