How We Cashed a +825 First Touchdown Betting Play in Lions vs Packers

Yesterday I wrote an article on why my model loved Montgomery to score the first touchdown in the Lions vs Packers game. At +550 there was a lot of value, so boosted at +825 I loved this play on DK.

One of the most important takeaways from that cash is to actually understand what statistics to look at when analyzing first touchdown plays. You see, Jahmyrr Gibbs and David Montgomery were both priced about the same to score the first touchdown (+550 vs +600 for Gibbs). This is because they both have scored about the same amount of touchdowns this season (11, 10) and both are used about equally in the game. Yet our model priced Monty far better than Gibbs for one primary reason. His volume in the first quarter and specifically in the first drive, where the lions score 38% of the time, is far more than Gibbs. Monty averages more than double rush attempts than Gibbs in the first quarter. This alone shows why he has 5 first TDs, compared to Gibbs 2, and why he was a far better value play compared to Gibbs last night, despite their similar odds on sportsbooks.

So remember to look into 1q rush attempts, red zone rush attempts and 1st drive statistics when analyzing first touchdown props for run heavy teams.