NFL PrizePicks Week 8 Predictions: Mac Jones & Kyle Pitts Highlight Top Plays
In this space, we’ll look at exciting offers on the PrizePicks board for Week 8 of the NFL season and try to make some predictions based on projections, trends, and the market.
PrizePicks, a DFS Pick’em site, lays out player projections for us to stack on a ticket for user-created entries. They prompt us with a statistical projection for a player, and we get to pick whether or not the player will get More or Less than the line offered. There are hundreds of players from whom to choose, and we only have to make at least two picks to create a contest. If you haven’t tried it yet, use the PrizePicks referral code “GRINDERS” to get a deposit match up to $100.
For NFL Week 8, we’ll look at the board and see what usage, gameflow, Vegas, and — of course — our projections can tell us about how players are likely to produce. We’ll look at passing, rushing, and receiving categories most weeks.
PrizePicks Top Plays for NFL Week 8
- Mac Jones LESS than 225.5 passing yards
- Dalvin Cook MORE than 0.5 receiving yards
- Kyle Pitts MORE than 33.5 receiving yards
New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins
Mac Jones LESS Than 225.5 Passing Yards
The best plays for our contests aren’t always the sexy MORE-thans. Sometimes, a PrizePicks projection is just too high that we shouldn’t resist the LESS-than.
This week, that would be Mac Jones and his 225.5 passing yards projection that PrizePicks has. Before throwing for 272 in Week 7, he only threw for 200, 110, 150, and 201 in the prior four weeks. His Intended Air Yards per attempt (IAY/PA) is down to 7.1 after living around 8.0 his first two seasons. Since Week 2, he’s only had 29, 21, 22, 33, and 30 attempts. There’s been rumbling about him being benched. The staff just flat out doesn’t seem to trust him.
Jones is the QB least likely to finish his start in Week 8, so I’m latching on to this play and making him my favorite pick for my contests.
PLAY: Mac Jones LESS than 225.5 passing yards
New York Jets “at” New York Giants
Dalvin Cook MORE Than 0.5 Receiving Yards
MORE than 0.5 is attacking a semi-nonsense line. Dalvin Cook isn’t a great receiving back, but his quarterback stinks, and he’s out there just enough to have 9 targets through six games this season, catching all 9 of them and only going one game without a target.
Again, the objective is pretty much never to get Cook the ball in the passing game, but crap happens, and the Jets need to check down a lot. It’s showing in how Cook has been used this season. We have Cook projected for 1.83 receiving yards because his snap count is low and his history is light on being an active receiver, but we should sprinkle this MORE-than into some contests, if we’re playing high volume.
PLAY: Dalvin Cook MORE than 0.5 receiving yards
Atlanta Falcons at Tennessee Titans
Kyle Pitts MORE Than 33.5 Receiving Yards
The Falcons’ underutilization of Kyle Pitts is infuriating, so it’s highly advised that we play this pick in our contests and don’t track it at all.
But it’s a good pick because 33.5 is pretty damn low.
Pitts has less than 40 receiving yards in two of seven games this season, but he’s surpassed it in three straight, with over 7 targets per game over that stretch. More valuable to us is that Pitts is getting serious air yards. His 11.1 aDOT should translate into serious real-life yardage over the course of that usage. He’s projected for 48.68 receiving yards at RotoGrinders, so clearing 33.5 should be relatively easy for us.
And that’s not even getting into the Titans pass-funnel defense, which should thwart the Falcons will to run the ball all game a bit.