First card of the NFL season, so the tracker starts from scratch here. Every pick gets logged, win or lose.
Buffalo Bills v Detroit Lions
The Bills are 4.5 point favourites at home, and it's their first game at the new Highmark. Buffalo had a lot of success through the air last week, and the Lions kept most of theirs on the ground. I expect that to change here, with an uptick in Jared Goff's passing volume. Both secondaries can be exploited, so this shapes as a high-scoring, entertaining game, and I'm taking Buffalo to win it.
Dalton Kincaid opened the season with five receptions from six targets for 130 yards, but the number that matters is the 72% snap share. That's his highest since Week 9 of 2024, and an uptick of that size points to more opportunity rather than a one-off afternoon. He needs a little over a third of last week's yardage to clear this line.
The matchup supports it. Detroit had real trouble with the Saints tight ends last week, with Juwan Johnson and Noah Fant drawing 15 targets between them and both finding the end zone. The yardage was modest on that volume, so this is a targets argument rather than a yardage argument, but the volume is there to be had.
On the other side, Jameson Williams has seen at least eight targets in six of his last seven games going back to Week 13 last season, the point at which Dan Campbell started taking a more direct hand in the offence. He has also brought in four or more receptions in six of those seven. He cleared the yardage number in five of the six games in that stretch last season, and while he missed it last week, the usage did not change.
There was a fair bit of uncertainty around his volume heading into the season, because the uptick coincided with Sam LaPorta being out of the side. LaPorta was back last week and Williams still saw the targets, which answers that question. It matters more again with Buffalo favoured and Detroit likely to be chasing.
Gibbs carried a heavy workload in Week 1 and Detroit might just ease off that a touch against Buffalo. If they move the ball through the air instead, Williams is the primary beneficiary, and both his receptions and yardage lines look beatable off that volume.
The last one is a price play. Dawson Knox was on the field for 67% of Buffalo's snaps last week and saw just the one target, which he caught. That's not a volume role, but it doesn't need to be. Kincaid at 72% and Knox at 67% tells you Buffalo spent a lot of last week in heavy tight end sets, and Detroit have just shown what happens to them when two tight ends are on the field together.
Knox scored four times last season, so nobody is pretending this is a high-probability outcome. There are more obvious options on this card. But at plus money against a defence that conceded scores to both Saints tight ends a week ago, he is the one that looks mispriced.
Best Bets
- Dalton Kincaid over 51.5 receiving yards @ $1.90 (1 unit)
- Jameson Williams over 57.5 receiving yards @ $1.90 (1 unit)
- Jameson Williams over 3.5 receptions @ $1.72 (1 unit)
- Dawson Knox anytime touchdown scorer @ $6.25 (0.25 units)
