Sean Koerner, our Director of Predictive Analytics, is highlighting his favorite NFL player prop for every primetime game of the 2021 season. He has a 428-325-6 (56%) all-time record on NFL bets he’s tracked in the Action app.
NFL Props: Bills vs. Titans
Emmanuel Sanders Under 4.5 Receptions (-120)
Sanders signed with the Bills via free agency this past offseason and has ran away with the No. 3 wide receiver role ahead of Gabriel Davis. Sanders has established himself as one of Josh Allen's favorite targets and is off to an excellent start with a very efficient line of 19/322/4 on just 31 targets.
Whenever we have a receiver banking on elite efficiency like that, it can create some value to fade them in their receptions market, which I will be doing here.
Sanders is sporting a 61% catch rate despite having an aDot of 16.5, and a player with an aDot that high would typically have a catch rate closer to 54.5%. Taking a closer look at targets 20+ yards downfield, Sanders has caught 5-of-9 (56%) from Allen (league average is 40%) while Stefon Diggs has hauled in only 4-of-12 (33%). Therefore, we can expect Diggs' and Sanders' downfield catch rates to regress toward league-average, making Diggs a good "buy low" and Sanders a "sell high."
Fading Sanders in this market is also a way to bank on Diggs, Cole Beasley and Dawson Knox — all three are set up nicely for Monday Night Football. Diggs is due for positive regression (as we established above), Beasley is due for a bounce-back game after only seeing four targets over the past two games, and Knox has a serious #Homecoming game narrative.
Sanders is averaging 6.2 targets a game this season. To haul in five passes with that target rate, he would have to catch around 80% — something I'm willing to bet against tonight.
I'm projecting him for 4.0 targets and a 62% chance of going under 4.5 receptions. A fair line for this market would be closer to -170 and I would bet it down to -150.
Pick: Under 4.5 Receptions (-120) at BetMGM
