The Favorites Pick ’Em Contest: NFL Week 8 Tiebreaker Strategy
Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images. Pictured: Jared Goff.
With the launch of The Favorites' NFL pick 'em contest, which is free to play, we decided on tiebreaker props to settle the winners of the $3,000 in weekly prizes.
In Week 7, nobody managed to get all five picks correct AND nail the tiebreaker exactly. However, two players were within one yard of the top selection, and thus split the first-place prize.
We're going with a similar prop this week, but switching from rushing yards to passing yards. As a result, we'll also be allowing guesses from 0 to 800 in order to capture the vast majority of the possible outcomes.
Important note: You can sign up for this contest at any point during the season.
Week 8 Tiebreaker: Total Passing Yards — Raiders vs. Lions (Monday Night Football)
Switching from rushing yards to passing yards makes this one easier to project. We can lean on the quarterback projections from Sean Koerner, the most accurate fantasy expert in FantasyPro's expert rankings in 2023.
While we could've used a similar strategy for running backs, the handful of yards picked up in a typical game by non fantasy-relevant players made that a bit trickier. However, it's a reasonable assumption that Jared Goff and … whoever plays at quarterback for the Raiders combine for close to 100% of this game's passing yards.
Koerner has Goff projected for 240 passing yards. As of Wednesday, he also has Jimmy Garoppolo projected to return, with 235 yards passing. That gives us a base projection of 475 yards — assuming Garoppolo is good to go on Monday night.
My Recommendation: Around 400 Yards
The ease of projecting this will likely lead to increased value in being a bit contrarian. There's likely to be a cluster of guesses around the upper 400-yard range, with that representing the likeliest outcome.
Therefore, in order to maximize our expected value, we have to decide whether considerably lower — or considerably higher — is the next most likely outcome. The ideal pick from a game theory standpoint is probably one lower/higher than the next most extreme person — though obviously we can't see the selections of the field.
For this game, there's a clear case to be made for it falling well short of the typical projections. Detroit has played more pass heavy over the last two weeks, but for the early parts of the season, it ranked near the bottom in pass rate over expectation. If the Lions score early on the ground, they'll likely keep it there throughout the game.
That also correlates nicely with a backup quarterback possibly playing for the Raiders and/or Garoppolo being less than 100% effective. If the projection is based around him being at full strength, there's more opportunities for this to fall short than exceed it.
Finally, it's worthwhile to correlate your guess to your spread pick if making one on this game. Detroit is an eight-point favorite as of Wednesday. If the Lions cover the spread I would expect less passing yards — they have the more effective passing offense but would play more run heavy. The inverse is also likely, as Las Vegas keeping it close should lead to — and be the result of — more total passing yards.
Therefore, if picking the Raiders spread, consider guesses in the mid 500s. In the three games Detroit lost or won by one score, the total passing yards were 476, 627 and 610.
The Lions covering lines up better with the lower end of the spectrum. In their four wins of eight or more points, we've seen combined passing totals of 382, 393, 461 and 545. The 545-yard total came when Detroit was without both starting running backs for most of the game, making it a bit of an outlier.
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