“Unlock your HOTTEST week 6 NFL Prop Bets Game Picks with the One and Only, Johny The Greek!”
Greetings and welcome to the Week 6 edition of “best bets”, a new article series for this season where we’ll discuss what I believe to be some of the best bets we can make each week of this NFL season. Week 6 NFL Prop Bets
Last week was much better overall with a winning record on the podcast but still only 1-2 overall for the article. We had the right idea, wrong player, with the Etienne bet (Bigsby had over 100 rushing yards and Etienne had a second-half shoulder injury that limited his snaps after halftime). The Seattle upset completely destroyed our second IDP Plus survivor league by knocking out everyone except two lucky survivors, no one could have seen that coming, and our New England/Miami bet was far under our alt line so at least that worked out. You win some, you lose some.
I’ll keep on saying it, when I’m looking at other people’s betting content I’m always using those articles/podcasts as “idea generators” and not just blindly tailing, I’d suggest you do the same. Even when I’m hot in one area (I had 89% accuracy on my cornerback corner article last week), it’s exceedingly rare that I’ll be hot in all areas. Take what you like and leave the rest. As Belichick would say, we’re on to Week 6.
More Great Week 6 NFL Advice:
- Hot DFS Player Lineup Rankings
- Biggest Week 6 NFL Injuries Impacts!
- Week 6 IDP Start or Sit
- Top Week 6 NFL Touchdown Prop Bets
REMINDER! These aren’t even suggestions, they’re just thoughts I’m putting on “paper”. Set a limit and stick to it, for help with problem gambling please call 1-800-GAMBLER. Week 6 NFL Prop Bets
All Game Picks for Week 6 NFL Prop Bets, game lines, moneyline prices, and spreads are accurate as of 10/9/2024.
Houston Texans @ New England Patriots
The bet: Texans -6.5 alt line, -128. Week 6 NFL Prop Bets
How to improve those numbers (riskier bet but a better payout): I would skip the Vegas spread on this one, it’s at exactly 7 points right now which means if Houston wins by a touchdown we still lose. I would either just keep my alt line so we’d win in that scenario or use an alt line like Houston -9.5 (+124) or -13.5 (+200) instead if you want to lean into the possible blowout.
The rationale: When I initially saw this line I was shocked that Vegas only has Houston winning by a touchdown even though they’re on the road and have been in many close games this season. While that may be true, they’re also the 6th overall offense in the entire league, first overall in passing offense, and middle of the pack for rushing offense even with Joe Mixon missing the past several games. Defensively they are, shockingly, the fourth overall defense in terms of yards per game and only allowing 22 points per game despite facing Buffalo, Minnesota, and Chicago, all of which are high-octane offenses (Chicago just recently, but still, they’re loaded with offensive talent).
There are injury concerns, then there are injury issues
They may be missing Nico Collins for a month and Mixon may be banged up but it’s not like Akers and Ogunbowale haven’t been acceptable replacements in the meantime at running back. Tank Dell, Robert Woods, and Xavier Hutchinson are perfectly good replacements for the missing Collins and we’ve seen all of them except Hutchinson put up massive seasons for us before (and Hutchinson has the hype and measurables from college). Even a slightly hurt Houston team still has more than enough firepower to clobber New England home or away, especially when we look at their opponent.
Not only is New England starting their rookie quarterback, who hasn’t looked great in the preseason or in the short spurts he’s seen in the regular season in blowouts, but they’re starting him against this Houston pass rush and behind their porous offensive line. The New England offensive line is ranked dead last across the entire league according to Football Guys rankings and PFF (PFF prior to the season, it’s behind a paywall now and I’m not paying to get past the wall). Houston is currently ranked 8th overall for team sacks through five weeks and features known and feared pass-rushers such as Danelle Hunter and Will Anderson among others. We saw Brissett running for his life all season and we saw Drake Maye running for his life all preseason, there’s no reason to believe we’ll see otherwise this week.
You can’t “pass your way back into it” without a passing offense
Beyond that, if and when this New England team gets into a negative game script I would like to know exactly how they plan to get out of it with a rookie quarterback, the worst offensive line in the league, the worst passing attack in the league (32nd overall, under 120 YPG passing), and the 7th worst time of possession ranking in the league? Not to mention that Houston is the second-best time of possession team in the league and controls the ball for over 33 minutes per game so the New England opportunities to even be on offense will be limited to start with.
On top of that we’ve already discussed the Houston injury concerns, which are minor in the grand scheme of things, now let’s have a look at that same factor for New England. This New England defense, which started the season strong, has slowly been losing playmakers to injury (Kyle Dugger, Ja’Whaun Bentley, Christian Barmore) and stupidity (Jabrill Peppers). This has shown in their rankings, once a top-five defense they are now 24th overall in yards per game (allowing North of 350 YPG) and 25th overall in allowing passing yards per game, which happens to be the strength of this Houston offense.
A tale of two teams with very different goals
There are fluctuations at cornerback with Marcus Jones and Marco Wilson battling for the third cornerback slot and uncertainty as to who will be their green dot defensive signal caller every week. In short, this defense is a mess and the offense has been a mess since the kickoff of Week 1. They face a Houston offense that is loaded with talent and a Houston defense that is within the top five overall, on paper this shouldn’t be close at all. With all that said, this is still the NFL and we never really know what will happen so I’d recommend tweaking that Vegas line down a half point, so we just need a touchdown win to get this one correct. Hopefully, it goes like it should, fingers crossed!
Pittsburgh Steelers @ Las Vegas Raiders
The bet: Under 39.5 alt line (-180). Week 6 NFL Prop Bets
How to improve those numbers (riskier bet but a better payout): Use the Vegas total (under 36.5, -110) or a different alt line.
The rationale: These two teams are the 26th overall (Pittsburgh) and 23rd overall (Las Vegas) offenses in the league for points per game at 18.4 and 19.2 respectively. If we get our normal average from these two offenses we’d be looking at around 37 points and would be a couple of points shy of our alt line above. I don’t think that’s what will happen though, with Las Vegas rolling out Aidan O’Connell in his first start this year instead of the seasoned (and always capable of spurts of solid passing offense) Minshew, we may get a scenario where Pittsburgh holds Las Vegas to well under their normal average.
That’s very likely how this happens, Pittsburgh rarely has explosive output offensively but is more than capable of holding down an already mediocre Las Vegas offense and winning this game by a touchdown, or field goal. Or a combination of the two.
The injury grim reaper is taking his toll
Beyond the shakeup at quarterback for Las Vegas, they’ve also got a ton of other concerns at the moment. Maxx Crosby is dealing with an injury that forced him to miss a game a couple of weeks ago, which is exceedingly rare for him to ever have happen. Marcus Epps is gone for the season at safety, Christian Wilkins just went to IR at defensive tackle, and Malcolm Koonce never had the chance to get started this year. They’re also hurting at linebacker with Luke Masterson on IR and Divine Deablo injured and questionable as well. Offensively, we haven’t seen Devante Adams in a couple of weeks due to a hamstring injury and Zamir White missed last week’s game as well. They were never a great offense to begin with and the loss of these pieces hurt them further.
What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas
Both offense and defense are shredded with injury for Las Vegas and they’re rolling out a new signal caller on top of that. The locker room issues and Devante Adams demanding a trade aren’t helping their cause either, things aren’t looking great in Vegas at the moment. Same deal for Pittsburgh in regard to injury with Alex Highsmith and now his excellent replacement, Nick Herbig, is also banged up. Their defense will still be stout though, and that’s not where their real problems lie.
This Pittsburgh passing attack is ranked 27th overall and is only averaging 178 yards per game through the air, it’s become so bad that there’s talk of bringing “Mr. Unlimited” off the bench to replace Justin Fields, and we all know how horrendous Russell Wilson has been in recent history. Their rushing attack isn’t much better, just middle of the pack and averaging 120 yards per game on the ground. Cordelle Patterson and Jaylen Warren are injured and neither looks likely to play while Najee Harris has been anything but impressive so far this season.
The offenses here are offensive
Beyond points per game for these two teams, they are also the 24th (Vegas) and 23rd (Pittsburgh) overall offenses in yards per game. In short, there are zero positive offensive factors for either team and both defenses have been solid (Pittsburgh is a top-ten defense while Vegas is middle of the pack but has Maxx Crosby, who can single-handedly wreck a game any given Sunday).
So we’re not seeing the best version of either of these teams, they don’t score a ton to begin with, and Vegas has this game as the second-lowest over/under of the week. All signs point towards a defensive struggle with offense being sparse at best and nonexistent at worst. Even with all those factors working for us I still want to tweak the Vegas lineup a few points to give us a little buffer and hopefully, that will be enough for us to walk away as winners with this one.
Detroit Lions @ Dallas Cowboys
The bet: Detroit Lions (Moneyline) -174. Week 6 NFL Prop Bets
How to improve those numbers (riskier bet but a better payout): Use the spread (Detroit -3, -115) or an alt line (Detroit -6.5, +150). If this goes the way I think it will that Detroit -6.5 alt line should be fine, I’m just playing it safe because this literally goes out to the masses and lives forever on the internet. Myself, personally I’d very much like to have some Lions alt lines including -6.5 and -9.5, I think they’re going to absolutely lambaste Dallas.
The rationale: First off, Dallas has won this matchup every single season since Week 8 of 2013, and Detroit is freaking due. That combined with the blindingly obvious differences between these two teams (one is aiming for the Super Bowl, the other is swirling the toilet, you know which one is which) is more than enough to take Detroit with a decent moneyline price this week. But we’ll dive deeper, as is tradition. You already know my thoughts on this Dallas run defense, currently ranked 24th overall and allowing 135 YPG on the ground.
It’s bad, and it’s exposed every time they face a “real” team with an effective rushing attack (274 rushing yards given up against Baltimore, 190 against New Orleans). Cleveland never had a chance to establish the run with their immediately negative game script while New York and Pittsburgh are mediocre rushing attacks.
Many yards and a cloud of dust
Detroit is not Cleveland, New York, or Pittsburgh. They have the two-headed monster of Montgomery and Gibbs and are the 6th overall rushing attack averaging over 150 yards per game on the ground. Detroit is within the top third of the league for time of possession while Dallas is ranked 28th overall in that category. Detroit can decide they want to stop passing (which they’re also great at, 7th overall in the league) and run the ball down your throat any time they feel like it, and have done so against exponentially better-rushing defenses than what Dallas has currently.
This Dallas defense in general is just a shell of what it used to be. Never mind the loss of Dan Quinn in the offseason, which was the beginning of the end in my eyes for the “great Dallas defense”, the injury grim reaper has come to visit on top of that. This week there will be no Micah Parsons, no DeMarcus Lawrence, no DaRon Bland, no Sam Williams, and no Jordan Phillips. This once-great defense is now relying on backups and rookies and they weren’t all that great against Detroit’s biggest strength, their run game, to begin with. On top of that, they’re missing Brandin Cooks offensively and have no effective run game themselves to try and counteract the significant advantage Detroit has in time of possession.
Breathe too hard on Dallas and they’ll abandon their (already bad) run game
Dallas is the second-worst rushing attack in the league and is averaging just over 80 yards per game on the ground, they are truly a one-dimensional team. Detroit was among the league leaders in sacks before getting their bye week and have a positive turnover differential while Dallas is in the negative for this ranking. This all lines up for Dallas to get behind, become even more one-dimensional than they already are, and play right into the hands of this much-improved Detroit pass rush and secondary. The addition of Carlton Davis in the offseason and the drafting of Terrion Arnold has helped turn around this Detroit secondary and Aidan Hutchinson is a monster at defensive end.
So while my gut initially pointed me in this direction, Detroit’s moneyline, the stats, and rankings back it up. Not only are they due for a win against Dallas but they’re also (clearly) the better team. Dallas got lucky last week against a pretender Pittsburgh squad that’s destined to lose immediately in the playoffs (just like Dallas will) but will have their hands more than full against a true contender this week in the Detroit football Lions.
Thank you for reading my favorite NFL Best Bets! Please don’t forget to check out the IDP Plus gambling channel on YouTube. And catch my MONEYLINE for more prop picks. Make sure you’re visiting IDP Plus for all your IDP and “non-traditional” fantasy football needs, we’ve got you covered for all your leagues, DFS, best ball, and betting needs!
