Jets vs Dolphins Pick, Prediction: Bet Miami on Black Friday

Jets vs. Dolphins odds have held relatively steady throughout the week, with Miami laying 9.5 points and the total at 40.5. That total is so low because Tim Boyle is taking over at quarterback for the Jets. Boyle's track record in NFL — and college! — is questionable. Miami's defense is hitting its stride, and we all know about its offensive potential.

Let's break down the matchup for our first-ever NFL Black Friday game and make a Jets vs. Dolphins pick.

How you handicap this game largely depends on what you think of new Jets starting quarterback Tim Boyle, who has spent the entirety of his career as a backup. Even Boyle’s college stats are largely underwhelming and make you question how he even got to the position he’s in. In 19 career games at UConn, Boyle completed 48.4% of his passes and averaged 4.5 yards per attempt. He had one career passing touchdown at the FBS level to 13 interceptions.

Boyle then transferred to Eastern Kentucky, where he didn’t play in the 2016 season before taking the field in 2017. During his lone season with the Colonels, Boyle did improve slightly from his stint at UConn. He threw for 2,134 yards with 11 touchdowns and 13 interceptions, averaging 6.5 yards per completion in 12 games.

Boyle has seen mop-up duty in his NFL career and has also started three. In those starts, he has three touchdowns and six interceptions to go along with the no touchdowns and three picks that he amassed when coming into the game in relief.

Over these starts, he's averaged a line of 20-for-31 for 175 yards. The results have been much more scattered than the averages, however. Boyle has one performance with 262 yards, one with 187 and one with 77.

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When looking through the game logs of Boyle’s career, I did pick up on one trend. He loves checking the ball down short and he loves throwing to his tight ends. During his Jets debut last weekend, Boyle targeted his tight ends on five of his attempts with four going to Garrett Wilson. Three of his 14 attempts were also to running backs.

This trend was evident in both Green Bay and Detroit as well. In Green Bay, Robert Tonyan saw plenty of targets after Boyle entered the game. In Detroit, T.J. Hockensen led the team in target share during one of Boyle’s starts but was traded before his other two appearances.

Looking at season-long numbers, the Dolphins defense has been fairly pedestrian. However, when breaking it down into a smaller sample size, they have been trending in the right direction as of late. Since getting Jalen Ramsey back in Week 8, the Dolphins have faced the Patriots, Chiefs and Raiders. While this would be considered a below-average stretch of opposing offenses, they have still performed admirably and will be playing yet another weak offense in the Jets.

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Over this stretch, when filtering out garbage time, the Dolphins defense leads the league in EPA per play allowed and ranks second in success rate allowed. The passing defense is sixth in dropback success rate and seventh in EPA per dropback while the rushing defense ranks fifth for both EPA and success rate basis over this period.

On the other side of this matchup, Miami has one of the best offenses but has struggled when facing good defenses, which the Jets certainly have. Despite these struggles against better defenses on their schedule, the Dolphins still rank sixth in my opponent-adjusted offense metric. They are also second in DVOA, PFF offense grade and EPA per play, and third in offensive success rate.

I know that New York’s defense is one of the best, but I believe Miami will be able to get over 20 points by themselves while I’m not confident that the Jets will crack double digits with Boyle.

There are several ways you could attack this matchup.

I believe that the Dolphins offense will be able to break through and put enough points on the board to cover this number. With the talent on Miami’s defense, Vic Fangio’s scheme and how that unit has been playing of late, I can’t bring myself to back Tim Boyle on a short week in his fourth career start.

If you aren’t confident in the Dolphins, I could also see a play on Boyle’s completions number as he will be throwing a lot of checkdowns, or reception props for the Jets’ running backs and tight ends. The under could also be in play here with two relatively strong defenses taking the field.

However, I’m a believer in the Dolphins offense and I think they will prevail in what could be a low-scoring game overall. Boyle provides a much-needed change for New York’s offense, but the Miami defense is hitting its stride and should be able to shut him down.