The Detroit Lions (1-0) and Buffalo Bills (1-0) will face off in NFL Week 2 Thursday Night Football. Kickoff is set for 8:15 p.m. ET from Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y. The game will broadcast live on Amazon Prime Video.
The Bills are favored by 4.5 points on the spread over the Lions (Bills -4.5), with the over/under set at 54.5. The Bills are -240 favorites to win outright on the moneyline while the Lions are +198 to pull off the upset.
Let's get into my Lions vs Bills predictions in my Thursday Night Football preview.
Lions vs Bills Prediction
- Lions vs Bills pick: Lions 1st Half Spread +3.5
My Lions vs Bills best bet is on the Lions to cover the first-half spread (+3.5). Make sure to find the best odds by checking our live NFL odds page.
Lions vs Bills Odds
| Lions Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+4.5 -105 | 54.5 -114o / -106u | +198 |
| Bills Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-4.5 -115 | 54.5 -114o / -106u | -240 |
Lions vs Bills Thursday Night Football Preview
We only get one game tonight, but luckily it’s a pretty fascinating one featuring two of the best offenses in football.
Some things to watch tonight: the Lions' offensive line is suddenly dealing with a cluster of injuries, Josh Allen is coming off an absurdly aggressive Week 1 performance, and the Bills defense still looks like the clear weak link of this team.
There are also a few things schematically that I’m really interested to see tonight, especially how Buffalo continues using its personnel after something we saw across the league in Week 1.
When the Lions Have the Ball
The Lions offense got off to a sluggish start in Week 1, taking just a 7-0 lead into halftime before eventually escaping with a thrilling 31-30 OT win.
It wasn’t too surprising to see some early growing pains under new offensive coordinator Drew Petzing, but this is still an offense with so much firepower and such a good infrastructure under head coach Dan Campbell that it has been able to remain elite even after losing Ben Johnson.
The much bigger concern tonight is the offensive line.
C Cade Mays, LG Christian Mahogany and RT Blake Miller are all out. Losing three starting offensive linemen at once is obviously less than ideal, and this is usually the type of thing the public tends to gloss over while sharper bettors put much more weight into it.
There is a pretty significant silver lining, though.
The two pieces I’d least want Detroit to lose — Tate Ratledge and the heart and soul of this offensive line in Penei Sewell, are both healthy. Detroit also spent the offseason specifically trying to improve its OL depth by adding Juice Scruggs, Ben Bartch and Larry Borom. All three have plenty of experience with 20+ career starts apiece, so this isn’t a situation where Detroit is throwing three completely unproven backups out there.
The biggest concern for me is going from the first-round pick Miller to Borom at RT. That looks like the weak link Buffalo will probably try to exploit.
That brings us to the Bills defense, which was always the weak link under defensive-minded head coach Sean McDermott.
Buffalo moved on from McDermott and promoted Joe Brady to HC, but we saw more of the same in Jim Leonhard’s debut as DC. Houston put up 31 points and Buffalo needed Josh Allen heroics to score 36 points against one of the league’s best defenses just to escape with the win.
Now the Bills have an even tougher test against Detroit.
One injury I’ll be monitoring right up until kickoff is S Cole Bishop, who is questionable after being limited the last couple days with knee/groin injuries. If he can’t go on the short week, that would be a massive loss for a Bills secondary that already has its hands full tonight.
When the Bills Have the Ball
This is probably the side of the ball I’m most excited to watch.
Buffalo’s offense picked up right where it left off and torched one of the league’s best defenses for 36 points.
Josh Allen’s new No. 1 WR, DJ Moore, immediately went for 5/100/1 in his Bills debut and gives Allen something he really hasn’t had since Stefon Diggs left: a true alpha WR who can give this passing game more stability week to week. Dalton Kincaid is also healthy and ready for an expanded role — he exploded for 5/130/0 in the opener.
But one of the things I’m most interested to see tonight is Buffalo’s personnel usage.
After the Rams had so much success leaning into 13 personnel last season, we saw teams across the league copy it in Week 1. That’s one of the more interesting league-wide trends I’ll be tracking early this season, and nobody used 13 personnel more than Buffalo in Week 1 at a whopping 39%.
Given how this roster is constructed, I think the Bills can really thrive with this approach. It allows them to get Kincaid involved while creating different looks for the defense without necessarily sacrificing their ability to push the ball downfield.
And boy did Allen push the ball down field in Week 1.
He led the league with 12.6 average air yards per attempt and he threw deep on a ridiculous 24% of his attempts — by far the highest rate in Week 1. Keep in mind, he did that against arguably the best secondary in football.
Now he gets a Lions defense missing both starting safeties in Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch.
I’m expecting Allen to stay ultra-aggressive tonight, especially on a short week when Detroit has less time to figure out how it wants to defend all of this without either starting safety.
Lions vs Bills Prediction, Betting Analysis
Don’t worry, I’m not going back to the under well here like I did last week with Patriots-Seahawks.
Last week checked a ton of boxes for the under and pretty much everything went perfectly for that handicap. Lions vs Bills is a completely different game.
I have the total closer to 55 and was actually surprised it opened at 53.5. To no surprise, it has already been bet up to 54.5, which sounds about right to me.
I also have the Lions around +4 for the full game, which is basically right in line with the market.
When I’m this aligned with the market for both the side and total, I like to think outside the box a little bit for my official play — that’s what led me to Lions 1H +3.5.
The Bills went just 5-12 against the spread (ATS) in the first half last season before going 12-5 ATS in the second half.
Normally I’m not going to blindly bet into a trend like that, but the actual scoring splits back it up. Buffalo averaged 12 points in the first half before jumping to a league-leading 16 in the second half. The defense had the exact opposite split, allowing 13 points before halftime and just nine after it.
The theme most weeks was pretty straightforward: Buffalo could be a little sluggish early, then Josh Allen would eventually take over.
That makes sense to me considering Allen is one of the best improvisers at QB we’ve ever seen. His ability to run, extend plays and push the ball downfield puts so much stress on a defense over the course of a game. Joe Brady is now the HC, but it’s still his offense, so I’m interested to see if that same general pattern carries over.
There’s also a specific reason I prefer Detroit in the first half given all of its OL injuries.
If the Lions lose big tonight, I think there’s a pretty decent chance we look back and say the offensive line was a major reason why. I don’t want to just hand-wave away three missing starters.
But as I mentioned above, Detroit specifically bolstered its depth over the offseason at the three positions it now needs those backups, and Sewell is still out there. If Sewell were one of the three guys missing, I’d feel completely different about this game.
I also think the scripted portion of the game gives Detroit its best chance to hide those weaknesses. Early on, Petzing can manufacture quick looks for Jared Goff and build in ways to avoid asking those backups to hold up for too long.
It’s later in the game where I’d become more worried.
Once we get away from the script, especially if Detroit is playing from behind and getting forced into obvious passing situations, Buffalo can start hunting those weak spots up front. That’s exactly when I’d rather not be holding Lions +4.5 for the full game.
I think Detroit has a pretty good chance to match Buffalo blow for blow early, and getting the key number of +3.5 gives us some protection if they don’t.
There’s another aspect of this that I think is pretty sneaky: Dan Campbell’s aggressiveness is actually a feature when the Lions are underdogs.
When you’re the inferior team, at least according to the market, you generally want to create as much variance as possible to potentially close that skill gap. Going for it on fourth down, being aggressive around midfield and generally refusing to coach scared are all ways to do that.
Detroit is 25-14 ATS as an underdog under Campbell.
Obviously, trends like that can be misleading, and a chunk of that came earlier in Campbell’s tenure when the market was still underrating Detroit. But the logic behind it has always made sense to me. His ultra-aggressive coaching style is naturally well suited for an underdog.
We just haven’t seen the Lions in that role often lately.
Then you have Buffalo creating even more variance on the other side. Allen throwing deep on 24% of his attempts can absolutely go horribly for this bet. Maybe he connects on a couple bombs against a secondary missing both starting safeties and Buffalo is up 17 before we know what happened.
But that aggression cuts both ways.
A deep incompletion on third-and-medium can turn into a quick punt. One of those aggressive throws can become an interception and flip the field. Those are outcomes that allow an underdog to hang around rather than Buffalo methodically controlling the game.
And that’s really what this bet comes down to.
I’m in line with the market on the full-game spread and on the total. But I think there are enough reasons to believe Detroit is better equipped to keep this close early, before its OL issues potentially become more difficult to hide and before Josh Allen gets a full game to start doing Josh Allen things.
Give me the Lions +3.5 in the first half in what should hopefully be a pretty damn entertaining 30 minutes of football.
Pick: Lions 1st Half Spread +3.5
Spread
As I noted above, I am in line with the market on the spread for the full-game. I explained why Lions +3.5 in the first half is the way to attack tonight's game.
Moneyline
I have no play for either side of the moneyline.
Over/Under
I'm in line with the market on the over/under, which has been bet up from 53.5 to 54.5 points since opening.
