Thanksgiving was a great day for our PrizePicks props, finishing 4-1. Now we turn our attention to a Thursday Night Football matchup between two of the teams that played on the holiday: The Cowboys and Saints.
As always, we'll use Sean Koerner’s industry-leading projections in our Action Labs props tool to identify the biggest edges.
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NFL Props For Cowboys-Saints
Taysom Hill Over 33.5 Rush Yards
It’s finally Taysom Time.
New Orleans simply doesn’t have the weapons to have a traditional offense. Without Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara, and with Mark Ingram's nagging knee injury, the Saints finally turn to Hill to run an unconventional but hopefully a more efficient offense.
In the four games Hill was a starting quarterback last season, he averaged 52.3 rushing yards, including 83 rushing yards against the Falcons.
The Cowboys have allowed only 142 total rushing yards to opposing quarterbacks this season, but have played very few signal-callers who have legitimate rushing upside like Hill. When they faced Jalen Hurts, he totaled 35 rushing yards, but the Cowboys dominated the game and put the Eagles in a heavy negative game script. And in the Cowboys' game against the Giants, quarterback Daniel Jones was knocked out of the game.
Thursday's matchup projects to be a close battle, on the road at New Orleans. We project Hill for 40 rushing yards, 6.5 yards above this total. Most sites have this prop at 36.5 yards, providing even more yardage of value.
This is a 7-rated prop in Koerner's model.
Tony Pollard Over 13.5 Rec Yards
There's much uncertainty surrounding Ezekiel Elliott’s knee injury, which translates to an increase in Tony Pollard’s usage. Pollard has seen an increased snap share over the past four weeks, reaching a 40% or higher snap share in three of the four contests. He's also seen 15 targets over those four weeks, almost half of his 31 total targets this season.
New Orleans has allowed the 10th-most receiving yards per game (41.9) to opposing running backs, and Elliott will likely be limited in the passing game due to knee concerns.
Pollard has averaged 35 receiving yards per game the last four weeks, and this total still remains too low. We project Pollard for 17.3 receiving yards, almost four yards higher than this prop. Most sites have this total at 16.5 receiving yards.
Dalton Schultz Under 4.0 Rec
Dallas has a full complement of weapons back for this game, with wide receivers Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup all projected to be on the field together for only the second time all season — the last time was in Week 10 against Atlanta, when Schultz saw two only targets and tallied just one reception.
Dak Prescott believes in getting all his receivers involved, and spreads the ball around every game. Schultz has seen an uptick in production the past few weeks, but that was without Cooper and/or Lamb available, and he's still failed to reach five receptions in four of the Cowboys past five games.
I would love this number to be 4.5 receptions, but I’m still taking it at 4.0 total receptions.