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.
First place in Week 12 went to "AyJayJay011," who nailed all five spread picks and came within two yards of the exact rushing yards tiebreaker for Bears-Vikings on Monday Night Football. The key was going well below the field with your guess, as both offenses struggled to get anything going.
That could be the case again in Week 13 for Bengals vs. Jaguars. We're going back to total combined passing yards, which should an interesting one given that Jake Browning will be one of the primary quarterbacks.
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Week 13 Tiebreaker: Total Passing Yards — Bengals at Jaguars (-8.5)
As we've touched on before, we can feel somewhat more confident in the median projections provided by Sean Koerner when it comes to passing yards. That's because in the majority of cases, there's only two relevant players at hand — as opposed to rushing yards, where teams use multiple running backs and other positions contribute to varying degrees as well.
The loss of Joe Burrow has the Bengals down to Jake Browning at quarterback, which clearly takes a big chunk away from their projection. Browning is projected for just 205 passing yards, even with a likely heavily negative game script as a significant underdog.
That game script also limits Lawrence's projection to an extent as he's not expected to air it out deep into this one. As such, he checks in at 242 yards, giving us a grand total of 447 yards between the quarterbacks.
My Recommendation: Low-to-Mid 500s
Contrary to last week, I actually believe that the better option this time is to skew higher than our median projections. The biggest reason is the play of Browning. While he's clearly no Burrow, he played like one of the better backup quarterbacks in the league last week, throwing for 227 yards against a tough Steelers defense. Pittsburgh ranks seventh in DVOA against the pass, one spot ahead of the Jaguars.
It's also probable that if Browning performs beyond his expectation, so does Lawrence. That's because Browning picking up yards increases the chances of the Bengals scoring, which in turn forces Jacksonville to remain aggressive offensively. You could push that number even higher if picking the Bengals to cover the spread, as that would mean this game stays within a score throughout.
Still, this one could be close for much of the game with Jacksonville going up multiple scores late. That would still lend itself toward more total yards from both quarterbacks.
The other factor is the public perception, which is presumably fairly low on the Bengals' chances with a backup quarterback. That's obviously harder to quantify, but the value in moving the opposite direction from the field is far greater than trying to precisely project the number.
If you're picking the Jaguars to cover, it probably makes more sense to err on the low side of our 447 baseline projection. If they control the game from start to finish, we probably get a heavy dose of the ground game — especially because that's where the Bengals defense is weaker. In that case, I'd consider going as low as the upper 300s in order to avoid the cluster of picks in the low-to-mid 400s.
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