This might be the best Thursday Night Football game of the season as the 9-3 Green Bay Packers take on the 11-1 Detroit Lions.
I’m focused on a Packers playmaker tonight in touchdown markets. Christian Waston could be in for a big game, and I’ll lay out how I’m betting on him below.
Christian Watson Player Props
Christian Watson heads into Week 14 as the receiver with the biggest relative gain in expected fantasy points among all WRs who have run at least 165 routes per Fantasy Points data. What makes up the bulk of fantasy points on a single play in most cases? Touchdowns.
That makes this a perfect spot for Watson, who has scored 10 of his 16 career touchdowns (62.5%) in the second half. On those 10 second-half touchdowns, Green Bay has been trailing by an average of 6.6 points. By comparison, in his six first-half touchdowns the Packers trailed by an average of 1.5 points.
Since Green Bay is at Detroit, this is the single most likely spot for the Packers to be trailing this season, which would play to Watson’s favor in the second-half TD department.
I popped a range of halftime scenarios into my “Bet What Happens Live” model, which we use to live bet player props at halftime of primetime games in the Action Network Discord. In most cases, I show value on the 2H TD.
For the most likely scenario, where Detroit leads heading into halftime by a field goal or less, I have fair value on Watson’s second-half TD at +415 to +425. If Detroit leads by more, then the fair odds dip below +400 if the Lions lead by at least six points. If it’s tied at halftime, then fair value is +440, which is the line is at FanDuel as of Thursday at 3 p.m. ET.
Since Detroit is favored in the first half, that means in more than half the scenarios show value on this prop, with the median scenario at about +415.
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Christian Watson Specialized TD Bets
I’ll also take a couple of specialized TD markets on Watson.
First, I’ll take Watson to score the first touchdown. Yes, I know that isn’t in the second half, but if he does score a TD I like this look.
That’s because Green Bay is far more likely to start with the ball given Detroit has deferred at a 75% rate in 2024, while the Packers have chosen to receive the ball 80% of the time when they win the coin toss this year.
We’re showing value on Watson +1500 for a first touchdown as well at BetMGM, and that might be underselling it given the coin toss splits. I’ll throw a bit on that.
Another look is for multiple TDs. In the 11 games that Watson has scored a touchdown, he has scoured multiple times four times with one three-touchdown game. Let’s bet on 2+ TDs at 22-1 at BetMGM and 3+ at 150-1 at FanDuel.
Finally, in five of the 11 games Watson has scored a TD, it was also the Packers’ first TD. Watson is +650 at BetMGM.
Here’s a quick summary of the bets, totaling one unit:
- Second half TD +440 at FanDuel (0.5u) – bet to +425
- First TD +1500 at BetMGM (0.1u) – bet t0 +1400
- First Team TD +650 at BetMGM (0.25u) – bet to +600
- 2+ TDs +2200 at BetMGM (0.1u) – bet to +1700
- 3+ TDs +15000 at FanDuel (0.05u) – bet to +14000
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