With the launch of The Favorites' NFL pick 'em contest, which is free to play, we decided on tiebreaker props to settle the winners of the $3,000 in weekly prizes.
We had a solo winner in Week 9, with user "sodproductions_" coming within one yard of the exact total for rushing yards on Monday Night Football. Guesses were all over the place and none of the five paid positions ended in a tie.
For Week 10, we're back to the passing yards tiebreaker for Broncos vs. Bills on Monday night.
Important note: You can sign up for this contest at any point during the season.
Week 10 Tiebreaker: Total Passing Yards — Broncos vs. Bills (Monday Night Football)
As always, the best way to arrive at a baseline for the passing yards prop is by leveraging the projections from our very own Sean Koerner, who currently leads the FantasyPros expert rankings for accuracy, so it would be hard to do much better. This is obviously easier with passing yards than rushing, since the majority of the time the two starting quarterbacks contribute all of the yardage.
Koerner has Josh Allen projected for 270 yards and Russell Wilson for 211. That gives us a grand total of 481, making that the most likely uncorrelated guess.
My Recommendation: High 300s
We aren't just trying to come up with the most accurate guess. Anyone could arrive at — or near — that 481 figure by leveraging Koerner's projections, player props or any number of methods.
To maximize EV, we need to balance likelihood of getting the number right against how frequently that number will be guessed — a 5% chance at taking first place yourself beats a 20% chance of sharing it 10 ways.
I'd speculate that the typical guesses will land in the higher end of the likely range thanks to optimism about the Bills' explosive offense as well as undeserved faith in the Broncos' passing attack. For that reason, shaving 50-90 yards or so off this guess produces a reasonable number, while avoiding the most popular answers.
That is unless you're also picking this game for one of your spread picks. In that case, it also makes sense to correlate your tiebreaker and spread picks — since you need to get both right to have a chance. This is a tougher spot to do that with. Denver is equally dreadful defensively against the pass and the run, while Buffalo is fairly balanced.
With all that said, the 7.5-point spread means Buffalo would need to win by multiple scores in order to cover. That at least somewhat correlates with a higher scoring overall game, and thus more passing yards. The inverse is true as well, where Denver has a better chance of covering a slow, low-scoring contest.
If selecting the Broncos as a spread pick, you could even come a bit further down from my recommendation of the high 300s. On the other hand, getting aggressive in the other direction makes sense for a Bills cover. In that case, the mid or high 500s would be my pick.
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