3 NFL Player Prop Bets for Thursday Night Football: Week 1

Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up within the betting market to measuring a player's potential to produce in daily fantasy football.

Here we'll focus on utilizing our projections and a slew of other tools and simulations to help make money betting player props. For this article, we are using the odds provided at FanDuel Sportsbook to pinpoint spots where value can be had tonight.

The prop-betting experience on FanDuel Sportsbook is getting even more fun. You can track your player props with real-time updates and place in-game props with ease.

Note: Betting lines and our player projections may change throughout the day after this article is published.

The 2022 NFL Season is here! Each and every week I'll be bringing a prop bets article for Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, and the Sunday main slate.

Stefon Diggs To Record a Touchdown (+130)

The NFL season gets underway with the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Los Angeles Rams, hosting the Buffalo Bills.

We have two great offenses to get us started for the new season, and that brings an over/under of 52.5 points with a close 2.5-point spread in favor of the road Bills. We also see the Bills carrying a 27.5 implied team total, nearly four touchdowns of production. Plenty of points are expected to be scored, and we want to look toward one of the best receivers in the league, Stefon Diggs.

Diggs is coming off a strong season where he finished with 115.53 Receiving Net Expected Points (NEP) and an 89.32% Receiving Success Rate. The Receiving NEP was the sixth-highest in the league while the Receiving Success Rate was the fifth-highest among wide receivers with at least 100 targets.

Long story short, Diggs is an elite receiver, and we're getting him at solid plus money for a touchdown.

Cam Akers Under 12.5 Rushing Attempts (-102)

Next up is a rushing prop for Cam Akers.

Under 12.5 rushing attempts for Akers is the spot I'm looking at tonight for a few reasons. Akers returned last year from a torn Achilles after only six months, a remarkably quick recovery, but he was rather ineffective in the games he played. During the playoffs, Akers managed just 2.6 yards per attempt, a less than appealing amount for a running back.

Next, during the preseason, Akers was dealing with an undisclosed soft tissue injury that caused him to miss some time, and he was able to return to practice last week. We also have to consider the fact that Darrell Henderson is going to be splitting work in the backfield.

Throughout training camp, there were several reports that the Rams planned to use both running backs in both the rushing and passing game. I say all of this and haven't even mentioned that the Bills' front seven is one of the best in the league. They are ranked as the third-best front seven, according to Sharp Football Analysis.

Finally, we turn to numberFire's projections that have Akers going for 11.86 rushing attempts tonight, with Henderson right behind him at 10.49 rushing attempts. Akers is not a true lead back for the Rams; it's a 1A and 1B situation. All of this leads to the under 12.5 rushing attempts.

Josh Allen Over 36.5 Passing Attempts (-114)

When it comes to NFL player props, quarterback passing attempts are one of my favorites.

Passing attempts for a quarterback can be dictated by the team's offensive tendencies, the overall game environment, and so much more. This makes them easy to project and, hopefully, easy to bet on.

For Josh Allen, I'm going with over 36.5 passing attempts. First off, this game features a high 52.5 over/under and a close 2.5-point spread. This means we should be seeing a close back-and-forth game, putting the Bills in a spot to continuously push the ball on offense. They won't be sitting with a large lead milking the clock.

Last season, the Bills averaged 37.7 passing attempts per game, which was the seventh-most in the league. This shouldn't be a surprise because the Bills had rather ineffective running backs last season. Devin Singletary finished with a Rushing Net Expected Points per carry at 0.06, while Zack Moss was 0.00. The league average for Rushing Net Expected Points per carry was 0.01.

The Bills don't have a good running game, and that should lead them to passing the ball more, just as they did last season.