Atlanta has played eight quarters, scored 16 points and hasn’t run a single snap inside an opponent’s 20. The Falcons have treated the red zone like a rumor. Michael Penix Jr. starts Thursday for the first time since his knee surgery, and the betting market has already paid for him. Green Bay opened -7.5 and is -4.5, and the total has dropped from 46.5 to 43. Run our 20,000 simulations at today’s numbers and the Packers cover 49.7% of the time. The correction is done.
What the market hasn’t sorted out is how this game gets played. Both defenses are walls against the run and leaky against the pass: Green Bay allows -0.233 EPA per run and +0.311 per dropback, and Atlanta allows -0.185 and +0.134. The DFS field is building around the running backs anyway. There are three places we see it differently:
- Green Bay’s backfield: MarShawn Lloyd is on 62% of rosters. The books’ rushing line has him behind Kaleb Johnson, yet our touchdown model likes Lloyd more than any other player on the board. The +220 price pays you for the uncertainty. The ownership doesn’t.
- Green Bay’s receivers: Christian Watson has the highest 90th-percentile outcome in our simulation, and Matthew Golden has the third highest. They’re owned at 12.6% and 7.6%.
- Drake London: he’s Penix’s favorite target by a mile, but our projection and the Bureau both have him under 5.5 catches.
Model vs. market: anytime touchdowns
We turned projected rushing and receiving touchdowns into a probability of scoring at least once, then compared it with the best price at the major US books. Our touchdown numbers run lower than the books’ on nearly every pass-catcher here, so the useful number is the ratio: how much of the market’s price our model supports.
| Player | Best price | Market | Model | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bijan RobinsonATL · RB | -150 | 60.0% | 46.6% | 0.78 |
| Tucker KraftGB · TE | +210 | 32.3% | 21.1% | 0.65 |
| Drake LondonATL · WR | +200 | 33.3% | 19.7% | 0.59 |
| Christian WatsonGB · WR | +165 | 37.7% | 18.9% | 0.50 |
| Kaleb JohnsonGB · RB | +200 | 33.3% | 14.1% | 0.42 |
| MarShawn LloydGB · RB | +220 | 31.3% | 54.4% | 1.74 |
Green Bay’s two backs are priced almost the same (Lloyd +220, Johnson +200), and our model has them further apart than any other pair on the board. The books’ rushing lines explain the price. Johnson is at 37.5 yards and Lloyd at 25.5, so the market thinks the lead job changed hands after last week. Our projection doesn’t agree. The honest caveat is that the projection gives Lloyd 18 carries, which is generous. The simulation builds carry shares from our play-by-play instead and gives him 10.5 carries and half a rushing touchdown. That still works out to about 44% to score, 1.41 times the price. So the result holds up even with a much smaller role.
Bijan’s 0.78 is volume doing what it can against a defense that has stuffed the run all season. Watson’s 0.50 is a warning, not a fade. His case is yardage and ceiling, not scoring.
Model vs. market: ownership
The field is paying for the ground game and the logos. Lloyd and Olamide Zaccheaus are both at 62.0%, Bijan is at 50.3% and Jordan Love at 49.4%. Zaccheaus is a $2,000 receiver whom our simulation gives two targets. Lloyd’s 62% is the number to fight. The betting market can’t even agree he’s the starter, and his simulated 90th percentile (17.2) is well short of either of Green Bay’s top two receivers.
The ceilings sit on the other side. Watson’s simulated 90th percentile is 29.5 DK points, the highest in the game and ahead of Bijan’s 28.4. Golden’s is 26.8, higher than both quarterbacks. Together they’re on about one roster in five. With Jayden Reed off the board, Love’s targets have narrowed to two receivers and Tucker Kraft, who played 98% of the snaps last week. In Love’s 16 starts on our record, Watson has 8 touchdowns on 62 targets and 0.51 EPA per target.
On defenses, the field prefers Atlanta’s DST (28.9%, $3,400) to Green Bay’s (17.3%, $5,000). That gets it backwards. Atlanta turned it over seven times in two weeks, and our simulation has the Falcons taking three sacks to Green Bay’s two. Green Bay’s is the DST worth paying up for.
Team context worth carrying
- Atlanta: in Penix’s 12 starts on our record, London saw 134 targets, 11 a game, with 0.32 EPA per target. Kyle Pitts Sr. saw 63 and Bijan 68. London has more targets from Penix than Bijan and Pitts combined, and that history is the case against our London Under. We still side with the model: London played just 62% of the snaps last week, and our simulation gives him 7.4 targets, not 11.
- Green Bay: the offensive line has used six different combinations in three weeks, and it lost its right tackle for the season last week. It hardly matters here, because Atlanta has four sacks in two games. Atlanta’s top corner, meanwhile, is on injured reserve, and the outside matchups both favor Green Bay’s wideouts.
See the full showdown analysis. Captain board, every prop against our projection, the optimizer and exposure.
Captain and build
On our board’s ceiling blend, Bijan is first by a distance. He goes in the flex, where half the field has him, and he’s the Atlanta bring-back if Green Bay’s passing game gets rolling. For captain we want the ceiling the field isn’t paying for: Christian Watson. He has the top simulated 90th percentile in the game and is on roughly one roster in eight. Love and Golden go around him, so the build wins if this game is played through the air, which is how both defenses are built to lose.
We’re not betting Watson’s touchdown to go with the captain. At 0.50 it isn’t fairly priced, and his case is yards.
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The bets
- MarShawn Lloyd anytime TD, +220 (BetMGM; +210 at Fanatics). Our projection has him at 54.4% to score, and even the simulation’s smaller role puts him around 44%. The price implies 31.3%. If Johnson really has taken the job, this loses. That risk is what the price pays you for. Keep it moderate.
- Drake London Under 5.5 receptions, -120 (DraftKings). This is the Bureau’s best bet on the game. The model has it at 64% against 54.5% implied by the price. The Penix target history is the risk, and we covered it above. The snap share and the simulation’s 4.3 catches are the reasons we take it anyway.
No spread and no total. At -4.5 our simulation is a coin flip (49.7%). On the total it has the Over at 52.2% against 42.5, which is not enough to beat the -118 DraftKings charges for it. The sharpest market has the Under 44 at plus money, but the US books sit between 42.5 and 43.5, and at those numbers the edge is gone.
Method: model touchdown probability = 1 − e−λ, where λ is projected rushing plus receiving touchdowns. Simulated distributions come from 20,000 runs of this game, drawn around the market’s team totals with shares and efficiency from our play-by-play. All numbers are from the DailyAmbush showdown ratings, projections and Bureau board as of Thursday morning. Lines move, so check your book before the 8:15 ET kickoff.