We have a real NFL barnburner Thursday night between the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns.
I bet the NFL was excited to put Trevor Siemian and Joe Flacco on primetime during the holiday season when it threw the 2023 schedule together (wink-wink).
Regardless of how exciting the game will be, we found three DFS winners for “Thursday Night Football” from the PrizePicks lobby. Let’s dive in.
Breece Hall more than 31.5 receiving yards
Hall is a much bigger part of the Jets’ offense than he was in the beginning of the season.
Coming off a serious leg injury in 2022, it’s not surprising that the Jets eased him back into action. Since Week 5, Hall has seen less than 60% of his team’s offensive snaps just once.
His involvement in the passing game has also been a nice development.
The Jets had a few free-agency flops with Randall Cobb phased out and Mecole Hardman gone.
Regardless, Garrett Wilson and Hall are by far the two most explosive players on the New York offense, and the Jets have made a point to get Breece the ball.
Through five weeks of the season, Hall’s target share was just 8%. But since then, that number has ballooned to 17.4%, which ranks second on the team behind Wilson.
His opportunity in the passing game has also doubled since Week 5. He ran routes on dropbacks 24% of the time during Weeks 1-5, but that percentage has spiked to 48% in Weeks 6-16.
Cleveland has a stingy defense, but it is allowing the 11th-highest backfield target percentage this season. Hall should continue to find opportunities Thursday and become a nice checkdown security blanket for Siemian.
Joe Flacco more than 36.5 pass attempts
Flacco has comfortably covered this number in every game he’s played for the Browns. He’s thrown the ball no less than 42 times in any game. So, what’s the catch? Why such a large discrepancy?
The Browns won three of those four games and only trailed badly once in a loss that required a negative game script to lean on the pass. Flacco at the helm hasn’t discouraged offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt from throwing the ball one bit.
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Across the last four weeks, the Browns have ninth-highest pass percentage during neutral situations and have thrown the ball 62.5% of the time (sixth-most) when leading by seven points or more.
I don’t expect this to be a breeze, but it seems like the philosophy is to keep chucking the ball. I’m in.
Elijah Moore more than three receptions
It’s not easy to find nice things to say about the Jets this season, but their pass defense is pretty good.
New York is yielding a 57% first-read percentage to quarterbacks – a league-low and by a considerable margin. So, opponents are targeting the first option on passing plays at the lowest rate in the NFL.
We’re going to have to see Flacco go through his progressions Thursday. Maybe that will end poorly, but that means David Njoku and Elijah Moore could be getting a few additional looks.
There were no receptions offerings on PrizePicks for Njoku at the time of writing, so let’s take a shot at Moore.
It’s no surprise that Amari Cooper is leading the Browns in first-read percentage this season (28%). That number has bumped up to 30% with Flacco across the past month.
Flacco has dealt with a few cupcake defenses during his Browns tenure, so he might have to rely on his role players a bit more Thursday when his first read is taken from him.