Have you fallen prey to a bad beat on an NFL spread, moneyline, or total bet in this 2023 season? Betting on anything to do with the final score in an NFL game can be very frustrating in a season that lacks great teams and is overloaded with mediocrity under the guise of parity.
This is why people like to bet on player props where it’s all about the individual and we don’t have to worry if a late touchdown produces a backdoor cover for the underdog. With so many prop markets to choose from these days, you’ll have no shortage of interesting bets to make for any game at top-rated NFL sportsbooks.
But whether you want to bet on anytime touchdown scorers or the over/under for a player’s passing, rushing, or receiving yards, you need to have some strategies that will help your bets win more in the long run if you put in the work.
Whether you are a new bettor or an experienced vet, we wanted to share some strategies of what you should be looking for and factoring into your player prop bets this NFL season.
Regression: Hot and Cold League
The most predictable thing about the NFL is that it will be unpredictable. This is what makes it so fun, frustrating, and ultimately addictive that we keep coming back week after week to bet on more things.
Streaks exist and they certainly do matter. We have seen Chrisitan McCaffrey score a touchdown in 16 straight games for the 49ers, but even that streak should end soon.
Most players do not sustain streaks. Their seasons are filled with peaks and valleys as this is very much a hot and cold league. Up one week, down the next, then rinse and repeat.
The main piece of advice we want to give you on player prop picks is that you must trust your process. If you think a player is going to explode in a game, and then he doesn’t, the worst thing you can do is give up on him the next week because you are angry he ruined your bet. That’s when he’ll explode, and you didn’t play him out of spite. This has happened to me many times until I realized going back to that player the next week is sometimes the best strategy you can have. Better to be a week early than to never reap the benefits of that big game at all.
When It Rains, It Pours… For a Bit
While streaks of great play always end, streaks of bad play will end too for good players. If you see one of the best receivers in the league has gone 6 or 7 games without a touchdown and it’s the longest streak of his career, your instinct should be to bet him to score a touchdown his next game. End that streak. If he averages 1 touchdown every 3 games and has gone that long without one, it’s just regression to the mean to expect him to end the drought.
Regression to the mean is real in the NFL. If a good player has a bad game and is completely healthy, you shouldn’t give up on him for the next game. You should back him just as much, if not more.
The NFL is also often illogical. No matter how much research you do, no matter how well you think you know how a game is going to play out, it can often be an outcome that is the opposite of what people expected.
Who saw Gardner Minshew (Colts) throwing for over 300 yards with 4 total touchdowns (2 rushing) in a 39-38 loss against the Browns and their top-ranked defense in Week 7? Sure, he still made big mistakes and lost the game, but from a props’ perspective, you could have made a mint if you had Minshew going off in yards and touchdowns like that.
This is why betting as a contrarian is often not a bad strategy in the NFL. Go against all logic and pick a bad quarterback to pass for 300 yards if you think he can do it against the defense. Andy Dalton had a 300-yard passing game this season against Seattle in starting for the Panthers when Bryce Young was injured. That had long odds but things with long odds hit all the time in the NFL.
Remember, you’re betting on things like yards and touchdowns with prop picks, not wins and losses. Dalton still lost that game 37-27 and failed to cover the spread, but he threw it 58 times and that helped his overs hit.
You have to balance trusting your gut and going against the grain to maximize success with betting NFL player props. If you only bet on things that seem logical, you will not win as often as you could if you get a little goofy sometimes.
Because the NFL is going to be goofy every week. Get goofy with it.
Understand Roles in the Offense
When betting on player props, you need to know a great deal about the roles the players have in their offense. This will help shape the statistics they churn out. Here are some examples of what we are talking about.
If you are betting on the Eagles, you might want to dial back the running backs scoring touchdowns – unless it’s Boston Scott against the Giants – because Jalen Hurts is their best goal-line option with the Brotherly Shove.
A speedy receiver like Rashid Shaheed in New Orleans is a great deep threat, but players like that can accumulate a lot of yards without getting many catches. This is why designated deep threats are good bets for their over in yards but not so much for their over in receptions.
Likewise, slot receivers who dominate the underneath throws like Jakobi Meyers (Raiders) are great for overs in receptions, but you probably don’t want to bet them to have 100-yard receiving games.
The Lions used Jamaal Williams for 17 rushing touchdowns last year, and they seem to want to do the same with David Montgomery this year when he’s healthy and treat 1st-round rookie Jahmyr Gibbs more like D’Andre Swift. Bet accordingly when they both play.
For low-volume passing offenses, a strategy you could do is bet the quarterback to go under in passing yards and his top receiver to go over in receiving yards. Parlay them together for a huge win since that has negative correlation. But it does work at times for offenses like Chicago (Justin Fields to D.J. Moore) and Atlanta (Desmond Ridder to Drake London).
If you are betting on an offense, you should figure out which players they favor for red zone touchdowns, if the leading rusher is also the lead receiving back or not, who is the No. 1 target for catches, and who gets the deep shots.
Understanding these roles in an offense will always help your prop picks get better. Betting on a player to score a touchdown who almost never gets a target in the red zone
Also, if you are going to bet on highly improbable things like the first touchdown scorer in a game or for someone to score 2 or 3 touchdowns in a game, your best process is to pick a few players you like for that and throw a couple of bucks on a Round Robin (2 or 3 picks per combination). That way if something were to by miracle hit, you can win a lot while betting less than the price of a milkshake.
How to Treat Defensive Matchups
With defensive matchups, you have to focus on the extremes at the top and bottom of the league. If you bet on a running back who is facing the No. 13 or No. 20 rushing defense, it probably won’t have any impact on the stats in that game.
But if he is playing the No. 1 (great) or No. 31 (terrible) running defense? That might matter a lot. If a good quarterback is playing a pass defense that allows a ton of yards, that might signal you to bet his over in passing yards. It’s the top 5 and bottom 5 defenses that you should focus on, especially later in the season when we have more data.
But you don’t want to put too much emphasis on where the defense ranks, because defense is less consistent than offense in the NFL, and the defensive stats are largely a reflection of which offenses they played that season.
We see it all the time where a great defense puts up impressive numbers against backups and quarterbacks who were later benched, but when they ran into a great quarterback, they were absolutely shredded.
Matchups matter, but they are not a huge cheat code for player props. In fact, one of the best things you can do with defensive matchups is figure out which teams do a great job of limiting No. 1 receivers because they may have a great No. 1 corner, or they may double-team No. 1 receivers like Bill Belichick has done in the past for the Patriots.
With that information, you can dictate if you want to lean towards the No. 1 or No. 2 receiver in a given matchup. But worrying if a defense gets roasted by tight ends in Week 5 is usually not actionable information. It could just be due to that defense playing 5 versions of Tyler Higbee and no one like Travis Kelce.
How to Read Division Games
Data nerds (like myself) love division games because they provide the most data on past and recent matchups between 2 teams. They also can produce some outlier results because of the familiarity these teams build with each other. You can pick up on some very interesting player trends from division games that are not by coincidence. Here are some amusing examples:
Baker Mayfield has 5 games in his career with 340 passing yards, and 4-of-5 came against Baltimore when he was with the Browns in the AFC North.
One of the easiest player prop bets all season was Buffalo’s Josh Allen throwing over 1.5 touchdown passes against Miami, because he’s done so in 12 straight games now, easily the longest streak in NFL history by one player against the same opponent.
Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans has 9 games in his career with fewer than 15 receiving yards, and 6-of-9 came against the rival Saints.
Derrick Henry is the best running back of his era, but it’s a bit funny that all 6 of his 200-yard rushing games for Tennessee have come against his AFC South rivals from Houston (4) and Jacksonville (2).
How do you handle the division rematches in a season? There are a couple of solid strategies for that. One, you could just expect lightning to strike twice like it often did for those examples we just mentioned. If it was a shootout with an aerial show last time, the rematch will be another one. If it was a defensive slugfest where neither team could run the ball, it will be that way again.
The other strategy, and this ties into what we said earlier about being a contrarian, is to go with the total opposite of the first matchup. If a player exploded last time, bank on him to regress hard to the mean and have a bad game. If someone was awful in the last matchup, he is going to redeem himself this time.
Let’s use Justin Jefferson for the 2022 Vikings as a great example of the opposite happening, including a non-division game rematch with the Giants in the playoffs:
- Jefferson vs. Chicago Bears: He had 12 catches for 154 yards in Week 5 before only having 4 catches for 38 yards in Week 18 (starters were pulled late).
- Jefferson vs. Detroit Lions: He was held to 3 catches for 14 yards in Week 3 and exploded for 11 catches for 223 yards in Week 14.
- Jefferson vs. Green Bay Packers: He had 9 catches for 184 yards and 2 touchdowns on opening day, but he was limited to 1 catch for 15 yards in Green Bay in Week 17.
Jefferson vs. New York Giants: He had 12 catches for 133 yards and a touchdown in Week 16’s win, but he was held to 7 catches for 47 yards in the wild-card playoff loss.
This is an extreme example, but in all 4 rematches, Jefferson had the complete opposite performance from the first game.
Now it is only simple logic to say that a rematch in the NFL will either be very similar to last time or something different. But if you can bet on a player’s prop to be significantly different in the opposite way from the last game, then you can hit some huge value bets by taking advantage of alternate lines.
I say this as someone who has a winning bet slip on Jefferson to finish under 50 yards in that playoff loss to the 2022 Giants. I picked up on this division rematch trend and applied it to that game and it worked great.
It won’t always work that well, but no strategy is infallible.
Use the Spread and Total to Develop a Game Script
While we are choosing to bet player props over the spread and total, we never ignore those numbers from the sportsbooks. They are a great foundation to build the game script in our heads for the upcoming game.
If the total is something high like 51.5, then we can reasonably assume there should be several touchdown scorers and big yardage in this game. If the total is abysmal like 36.5, then we can assume the Jets are playing the Giants and to keep expectations low.
But the spread is also important. If Josh Allen is a 15-point favorite in a game for Buffalo, does he really need to throw for 300 yards that day? That could be an easy win where the running game takes over in the late stages with the lead secure.
Likewise, a big underdog may need to throw often to catch up, leading to good over picks for that passing offense and good unders for the running back’s rushing props as they abandon the run.
This whole time we have essentially been talking about our vision for the game scripts. This great quarterback should light up this bad defense. This receiver should end their touchdown drought. This running back should get a lot of opportunities for short touchdown runs against the worst red-zone defense in the NFL.
Figuring out likely game scripts is an ideal way to make your prop picks each week, and factoring in the spread and total is one of the first steps to that. You also have to check out the injuries and weather, which are our next sections.
Keep Up with the Injury Reports
You should always be looking at the injury reports for your NFL bets, but they are even more crucial for prop picks. If a player has been limited in practice or missing entire days of practice, you may want to avoid taking their over that week. You also may want to fade any player who is just returning from a concussion. Give them a week to get right. The under might even be the best bet in these cases, but this is another tricky thing with prop picks.
We saw Travis Kelce crumble to the ground with a non-contact injury in Minnesota, finish the game, but then he had a game 4 days later against Denver. It seemed like a good spot to avoid Kelce, or bet the under, but I guess Taylor Swift has the magical healing touch as he caught all 9 targets for 124 yards that night.
But if you were concerned for Joe Burrow this season after his calf strain injury in July, then you could have been cleaning up on taking the under for his props early this season.
Generally speaking, health is the most important thing to a player. When a great player is struggling for multiple weeks at a time, there often is an injury associated with that.
For example, Aaron Rodgers started 2022 adequately without Davante Adams, but after Rodgers broke his thumb in Week 5, he was never the same quarterback. After another injury knocked Rodgers out of a game in Philadelphia in Week 12, he never threw more than 1 touchdown pass in his final 5 games for the Packers, the longest streak of his career.
An unhealthy player is not a good bet for overs or for playing up to their usual standard. Check out those injury reports.
The other side of injuries is when a good player is ruled out, his backup could be presented with an incredible opportunity to make up that production. We already saw it this year with rookie Puka Nacua exploding for the Rams while Cooper Kupp started the season with a hamstring injury. Nacua has earned his stripes thanks to that run, and he has been a great prop pick most weeks.
But injuries that happen during games are also the best argument for why you should consider sprinkling in some unders for the right matchups. Sure, betting unders feels bad, because who wants to watch a game and root against the offense doing anything good with the ball? But under bets start you in the winning position, and some research has shown them to be more profitable than overs in the long run.
Check the Weather
For most NFL games played outdoors, you can ignore the weather. But there could be a couple of games per season where the weather is extreme enough that it will dramatically alter the statistics.
Extreme wind (20+ miles per hour) can be awful for passing as we saw in 2021 when the Bills lost 14-10 to the Patriots on a Monday night game where New England threw the ball 3 times. In games like this, you have to think unders for passers and receivers, overs for rushers, and the running backs become the best touchdown scorer options.
Snow games are a mixed bag as it depends on how heavy the snow is, how good the playing surface is, and the quality of the offenses involved still matters. A snow game between the Bills and Chiefs would probably still be fun in 2023, but a snow game between the Browns and Jets would be awful for offense in most years in NFL history.
If the rain is so bad that a punt sticks in the ground like it infamously did in a 2007 game between the Dolphins and Steelers that ended 3-0, then it is probably a game where you’ll want to bet there is no touchdown scored. Fortunately, or unfortunately for bettors, those games rarely come along, but you can ask the 2022 49ers about what it’s like to lose to Justin Fields and the Bears in a monsoon.
Again, most games will be fine with the weather, but those extreme cases of wind, snow, and a very cold game could make scoring and passing more difficult.
Take Advantage of Early Lines
Perhaps even more than the spread and total, lines can move very fast for player props, so you might get some of your best value by betting on a player as soon as you can when lines are released. Once those bets start coming in, the lines can move fast and the difference between over/under 55.5 receiving yards and 62.5 receiving yards can be very significant on game day.
Also, in the rare chance that a player who was expected to play is ruled out with injury and the lines drastically change, that could put you at a good advantage (or disadvantage depending which side you took) for your player to have a better game now. For example, if you thought Tee Higgins was probably going to miss Cincinnati’s game in Arizona with a rib injury (he did), then it should have been a big week for Ja’Marr Chase (it was). Sure enough, Chase had 192 yards and 3 touchdowns that week.
This is why sportsbooks often hesitate to release player props when there is a big question mark about a key player’s availability. But if you can get an early line on a player you like, then you should take advantage of that before it shifts again.
Shop Around for Best Lines and Prices
Finally, make sure you shop around for the best lines on player props. Using a resource like OddsTrader, you can quickly compare lines for player prop picks at various top-rated sportsbooks. This can get significant for something like touchdown scorers as it is not uncommon to see one sportsbook offering a touchdown scorer at +130 and a different sportsbook having the same player at +170 or better.
Not only do you want to pay attention to the price, but make sure you are looking at the number offered too as those can vary with the over/under yardage props. You might be able to get over 265.5 passing yards at -110 while another sportsbook has over 272.5 passing yards at -113. Both numbers matter.
The availability of alternate receiving lines, a favorite market for Same Game Parlay bettors, makes line shopping even more crucial. Some sportsbooks may offer alternate receiving yardage lines for players in denominations of 25, 40, 50, 60, and so on while other sportsbooks may offer 14, 24, 34, 44, 54 yards, etc. Play around with the odds to find your best value and ultimately find your favorite sportsbooks to make prop picks.
Conclusion: Do Your Research and Have Patience
This is a lot to consider each week, and it can take more time to find the right player prop picks for a game than it takes debating if the Chiefs can beat Denver by more than 7 points.
But if you are serious about betting on the NFL, then you should be putting in the time to research your props and find the right trends and what works for you when there are so many options available to bet on for each game.
But you better have patience too.
We began this piece by mentioning bad beats when betting the spread or total in the NFL. Make no mistake about it, some of your worst bad beats will come on player props. You may have already experienced that.
Who among us hasn’t thrown “Darren Waller 25+ Receiving Yards” into a Same Game Parlay only to regret it hours later? Waller had games with 20 and 21 yards in Weeks 3-4 this season.
Maybe you needed 1 more catch from Amon-Ra St. Brown, and he missed the entire 2nd half with an injury as injuries are the absolute worst part about betting player props. One injury can sink the whole bet, which is argument enough to consider more unders from time to time.
Wait until you bet the over on a quarterback’s rushing yards and he loses it after taking a couple of kneeldowns to end the game. It happens multiple times a season.
But I once had a parlay ready to hit for a huge win that had a leg where Leonard Fournette needed to have 25-plus receiving yards. He had 26 yards with the game in overtime, he caught a pass that lost 7 yards to drop him to 19, and the game ended two snaps later, crashing my otherwise perfect parlay. That’s probably the worst loss I ever had on a player prop.
Bad beats are going to happen with player props too. They happen with all bets. If this stuff was too easy, we’d all be millionaires. But do your research, have some patience, and in time, you should see some success with player props in NFL betting.
Last bit of advice: you don’t need a pick for every game. Seek the best values you can as some games are just not going to be any good for player statistics. Look at Kenny Pickett. He often has one good drive a game for the Steelers, but it is a touchdown in the 4th quarter, and they win the game. You can be the Kenny Pickett of NFL prop betting if you just choose your spots wisely.
Sometimes, one great bet a week is all you need to have a successful week in the NFL.
