Seattle held Kansas City to three points last Sunday and got shorter in the betting market for it. The Seahawks opened as five-point favorites over Chicago and are laying three tonight, with the total down a point to 46.5. That is not the market doubting Seattle’s defense. It is the market noticing that the best offense in this game is the one wearing navy and orange: Chicago is averaging 0.126 EPA per play with a 49.9% success rate, Seattle 0.031 and 44.4%. Caleb Williams is two games back from a lower-body injury, the Bears have scored 30-plus in both of them, and the three-point line prices this as a near coin flip that Seattle wins 57% of the time in our simulation.
The DFS field did not get the memo. Projected ownership says Sam Darnold 62%, Zach Charbonnet 62%, Cooper Kupp 58%, Tory Horton 47%: the Seattle blowout the line spent all week walking away from. The anytime touchdown board has its own version of that, pricing Jaxon Smith-Njigba as a coin flip to score. Here is where our simulation and ratings come down somewhere else:
- Chicago’s quarterback: the same projection as Darnold at 17% of the ownership.
- D’Andre Swift: the third-highest simulated score on the slate, 7% owned, because the crowd read one Seattle run-defense streak and stopped.
- Seattle’s backfield: a season debut the field is treating as a workhorse role.
- Seattle’s passing volume: 26.6 simulated attempts against prices built for 30.
Model vs. market: anytime touchdowns
We converted projected rushing and receiving touchdowns into a probability of scoring at least once and compared it with the best price at the major US books. The useful column is the ratio: how much of the market’s price our model supports.
| Player | Best price | Market | Model | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jaxon Smith-NjigbaSEA · WR | -105 | 51.2% | 30.0% | 0.59 |
| D’Andre SwiftCHI · RB | -110 | 52.4% | 44.8% | 0.85 |
| Zach CharbonnetSEA · RB | +135 | 42.6% | 47.2% | 1.11 |
| Emanuel WilsonSEA · RB | +375 | 21.1% | 31.3% | 1.48 |
| Colston LovelandCHI · TE | +225 | 30.8% | 22.4% | 0.73 |
| Luther Burden IIICHI · WR | +240 | 29.4% | 18.9% | 0.64 |
No touchdown bet tonight, and the table says why. Smith-Njigba’s 0.59 is the widest overprice on the board: the model projects 0.34 receiving touchdowns on 8.6 targets, which is a 30% scorer, not a 51% one, and the gap is volume: Seattle only throws 27 times in the simulation, and 1.6 passing touchdowns spread across a target tree does not get its best receiver to a coin flip. Swift at 0.85 is the best-supported price in the game and still not a bet at -110. The two green rows are the same bet in two jerseys and we are not taking either: our stat projection gives Charbonnet 14 carries and the goal line in his season debut, which is the most optimistic available reading of a back Seattle has said it will ease in, and the Wilson number only exists if that debut is a cameo. One of those two prices is right. We do not know which, and neither does the market, which is why the rushing-yard lines for the two backs are 33.5 and 19.5 and the ownership is 62% and 4%.
Model vs. market: ownership
Darnold and Williams project within a quarter of a point of each other: 16.7 and 16.5 on the board, 14.8 and 16.7 in the simulation, where Williams has the higher mean and the higher 90th percentile (23.8 to 21.2). Darnold is $800 cheaper and 45 points of ownership heavier. The gap is a matchup label. Chicago’s pass defense allows 0.222 EPA per dropback, which is bad, and Seattle’s allows 0.037, which is excellent, so the field has concluded that Darnold is the quarterback to own. The simulation is less sure. Seattle’s offense runs 59 plays a game to Chicago’s 66 and throws on fewer than half of them, so Darnold’s good matchup comes with 27 attempts and Williams’s bad one comes with 31. On the field, Williams’s best area this season is deep left, 1.527 EPA per attempt, and Seattle’s weakest area is deep middle. Nobody is going to have a clean day against this secondary, but the quarterback the field owns at 62% is not the one with the volume.
Swift is the mispricing. Kyle Monangai is out, Swift handled 93% of Chicago’s backfield touches last week, he has 12 carries inside the 5, the most on his team, and the simulation gives him 15 carries, 3.5 targets, a 14.4-point mean and a 47-point ceiling, third on the slate behind only Smith-Njigba and Williams. He is 6.8% owned at $9,800. The reason is a streak: Seattle has not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 36 straight games, and its run defense is genuinely elite at -0.124 EPA per carry. Both facts are true and neither one touches a back whose case is 18 touches and the goal line. A 60-yard, one-touchdown night with a couple of catches is a disappointment against that streak and about 15 DraftKings points for the one back on his side who will be on the field.
Charbonnet is the other side of the coin. Our board projects him for 5.5 points at $7,000 in his first game back, and the books have his rushing line at 33.5 yards. Sixty-two percent of the field is paying for a lead back and getting a player whose own team has said it is easing him in. Kupp at 58% is a smaller version of the same thing: in Darnold’s logged starts he has 58 targets for 372 yards and 2 touchdowns at -0.008 EPA per target, the weakest return of any regular in that passing game, and his simulated mean is 6.1 points. Horton at 47% is the one piece of Seattle chalk the numbers like: his route share is climbing with Rashid Shaheed out, and at $2,800 the floor he needs is low.
On the Chicago side the low ownership runs all the way through the receiving corps. Burden is 4.0% owned with the second-highest simulated ceiling among the pass-catchers (43.3), Loveland 5.8%, Rome Odunze 8.4%. Those three are suppressed for a real reason, Seattle’s slot defense allows 3.8 yards per target and the short middle, Chicago’s bread and butter at 57 attempts, is where Seattle concedes 0.041 EPA per play, close to nothing. We agree with the field on the receivers and disagree on the back and the quarterback. The defenses are backward too: our Board rates the Seahawks’ unit well ahead of Chicago’s (57.1 to 42.9 as a flex) and it is the lower-owned of the two at 7.2%. Seattle has 51 quarterback hits and 8 interceptions in seven games; Chicago’s defense has 4 interceptions.
Team context worth carrying
- Chicago: 65.6 simulated plays to Seattle’s 59.4, and a 31-to-27 edge in pass attempts. The Bears are the faster, higher-volume offense in this game and they are priced like the slower one.
- Seattle: the pass defense allows 0.037 EPA per dropback and the run defense -0.124 per carry. The one soft spot is deep middle, 1.068 EPA allowed, on five attempts all season, which is a sample, not a plan.
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Captain and build
Smith-Njigba is the captain and it is not close. His 34.7 ceiling is 9 points clear of anyone else in the pool, his simulated 90th percentile is 30.2 and his tail runs to 57, and at 29% ownership he is nowhere near the chalk that Darnold, Charbonnet and Kupp are. The touchdown price is wrong on him; the yardage is not. He averages 85 yards in the simulation on 9.7 targets with Shaheed out, and 8 catches for 100 at the multiplier is 27 points before anyone scores. Underneath him go the two Chicago players the field has walked past: Williams at 17% and Swift at 7%, the second- and third-highest simulated means in the game, and the Seahawks’ defense as the correlated piece if Seattle’s front does to Williams what it did to Kansas City.
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The bets
- Sam Darnold Under 238.5 passing yards, -113 (FanDuel; 236.5 at -111 on DraftKings). Both of our numbers are under this line: the stat projection says 226 and the simulation says 200 on 27 attempts. Seattle has the lowest play volume in the game and throws on fewer than half of its snaps, and the quarterback the DFS field owns at 62% is priced by the books for a volume his offense does not generate. This is the cleanest number on the board.
- Luther Burden III Under 4.5 receptions, -140 (BetMGM; -152 on DraftKings). The Bureau has this at 64% against a 58% market price. Burden runs more than 44% of his routes from the slot, Seattle allows 3.8 yards per target there, the fewest in the league, and he has gone under 4.5 in 7 of his last 10. Our projection is 4.0 catches on 5.4 targets. Chicago’s volume lands with Swift and Loveland, not here.
- Jaxon Smith-Njigba Under 7.5 receptions, -135 (BetMGM). The same bet as the Darnold under in a different jersey, so size the pair as one position. Our projection is 6.0 catches, the simulation 5.8 on 9.7 targets. He is our captain because his catches are 14 yards long and his tail is a 50-point night, not because he catches 8 balls.
No touchdown bet, no side, no total. The simulation has the game Seattle 25-22 with the Over at 52.6% and the Seahawks covering 48.3% of the time, which at -3 and 46.5 is a market that has already done its homework.
Method: model touchdown probability = 1 − e−λ, where λ is projected rushing plus receiving touchdowns. All numbers are from the DailyAmbush showdown ratings, projections, 20,000-run game simulation and Bureau board as of Monday morning. Lines move, so check your book before the 8:15 ET kickoff.