NFL Week 11: Weekend Specials Bets

Nov 19, 2021

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Week 10 Recap: Betting these specials each week can be both very fun (when winning) and tilting when losing on good process plays. Last week looked very encouraging when Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb were balling out in the first half of the Falcons game with 219 passing yards for Prescott and 94 receiving yards for Lamb. Unfortunately, the game got so out of hand (35-3 at half) that CeeDee Lamb finished playing 42% of snaps and the Cowboys turned to a run-heavy approach before eventually bringing in Cooper Rush for cleanup duty at quarterback.

This should be a reminder that hitting these specials is not easy. In fact, most weeks we won’t hit on one of them—and a lot has to go right for them to hit.

The process is the most important part and it was very encouraging to see what both Prescott and Lamb were able to do against the Falcons.

Players Who Have a History of Hitting Ceiling Games

Adding onto the research we looked at last week, I wanted to see which players had the most games hitting the “ceiling” or the range of outcomes we are looking for in our sample.

This will help us quickly identify the true ceiling players and they can make our focus easier each week when evaluating the market. It will also allow us to closer quantify our edge and use these implied probabilities and compare it to the implied probability of the line itself to find an edge.

For your information, I’m dating this back to the start of 2016 and will be including Week 10 of this season.

Quarterbacks

Minimum threshold: 388
Median threshold: 416

Target Players at QB Based on Ceiling
Player	Games Started	Games Over Min.	Games over Median	% Over Min.	% Over Median	Ceiling	Games Since Last Hit
Dak Prescott	77	10	7	0.1298701	0.090909091	502	2
Patrick Mahomes	56	8	5	0.1428571	0.089285714	478	0
Tom Brady	85	7	2	0.0823529	0.023529412	447	4
Kirk Cousins	88	5	4	0.0568182	0.045454545	458	9
Aaron Rodgers	80	5	5	0.0625	0.0625	442	34
Matt Ryan	88	5	3	0.0568182	0.034090909	503	24
Ryan Fitzpatrick	42	5	2	0.1190476	0.047619048	419	9
Joe Burrow	19	2	1	0.1052632	0.052631579	416	2

The cream of this is Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott as they hit this number on over 12.5% of their games! Fair odds each week based on that should be +700. If we see anything lower than those odds we should start getting intrigued.

Kirk Cousins is an underrated candidate here as he does have some ceiling games. If the market is low on him, he starts getting interesting at +2000.

Funny enough, Ryan Fitzpatrick is a great play whenever he starts as he has a crazy ceiling in his games.

Joe Burrow is getting interesting as a play who can reach the heights of Mahomes and Prescott. Having Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins tied to his hip for the next few years should make him a potential target every week.

Running Backs

Minimum threshold: 142
Median threshold: 158

Target Players at RB Based on Ceiling
Player	Games Started	Games Over Min.	Games Over Median	% Over Min.	% Over Median	Ceiling	Games Since Last Hit
Derrick Henry	55	14	10	0.2545455	0.181818182	250	2
Ezekiel Elliott	80	7	1	0.0875	0.0125	159	5
Dalvin Cook	49	5	3	0.1020408	0.06122449	206	14
Christian McCaffrey	50	4	2	0.08	0.04	184	16
Nick Chubb	44	4	3	0.0909091	0.068181818	176	2
Jonathan Taylor	23	4	2	0.173913	0.086956522	253	1
Aaron Jones	52	4	1	0.0769231	0.019230769	168	12

Derrick Henry is the king of this weekly special, but it looks like a new contender is emerging in Jonathan Taylor. With Derrick Henry out, Jonathan Taylor should be on a weekly watch to hit this number.

There’s a glut of five other decent contenders we have to watch out for every week.

Ezekiel Elliott is not much of a contender anymore as he has only hit this threshold once in the past four years and he scraped by the threshold by one yard.

Good matchups can help us determine which of these players are good values.

Wide Receivers

Minimum threshold: 158
Median threshold: 175

Target Players at WR Based on Ceiling
Player	Games Started	Games Over Min.	Games Over Median	% Over Min.	% Over median	Ceiling	Games since last hit
Tyreek Hill	67	6	5	0.08955224	0.074626866	269	6
Julio Jones	76	6	2	0.07894737	0.026315789	300	16
Davante Adams	79	5	3	0.06329114	0.037974684	206	4
T.Y. Hilton	73	5	3	0.06849315	0.04109589	199	31
Mike Evans	85	5	5	0.05882353	0.058823529	198	10
Amari Cooper	81	5	4	0.0617284	0.049382716	226	35
Brandin Cooks	81	5	1	0.0617284	0.012345679	186	9
Antonio Brown	50	4	3	0.08	0.06	213	14
Stefon Diggs	78	4	1	0.05128205	0.012820513	182	0
A.J. Green	55	4	2	0.07272727	0.036363636	189	45
DeAndre Hopkins	86	4	1	0.04651163	0.011627907	224	10
Deebo Samuel	25	2	1	0.08	0.04	189	2
Justin Jefferson	23	2	1	0.08695652	0.043478261	175	20
Ja'Marr Chase	9	2	1	0.22222222	0.111111111	201	2
George Kittle	51	2	2	0.03921569	0.039215686	210	12

I added those four guys with two “ceiling” games due to them being in the league after 2016 and will perform better on a per-game basis.

We know Tyreek Hill has a high ceiling, but it was really interesting to see receivers like Mike Evans and Amari Cooper pop in here. We should likely be targeting them in good matchups as it's possible the market undervalues them due to not having blow-up games recently.

Julio Jones is going to likely be a fun value to hammer when he gets healthy as there's a lot of recency bias behind him, but his efficiency is still elite.

Ja'Marr Chase will be a fun one to monitor as he has a chance to really "break" these weekly specials and have some crazy ceiling games.