Tail Outcomes: NFL Week 1 Picks For Rams At Lions Alts On Sunday Night Football

Football has an almost infinite number of data points yielding countless stats and ways of breaking down the game. The goal of this weekly column is to filter through much of the noise of stats and data to highlight those stats that matter, using those stats as a framework for NFL Week 1 picks that betting apps in the market might not capture well. This week, I’m looking at Sunday Night Football odds and the playoff rematch between the Rams and Lions.

As always in my work, I will try to orient my research towards tail outcomes, more difficult for sports betting sites to price. These tail outcomes orient risk on a bettor’s side while not needing to win more than half the time in order to profit handsomely. We will cover a game or two within NFL Week 1 odds, with some stats, analysis of those key stats, and graphs.

Week 1 Sunday Night Football Odds

Lions 2024 Outlook Is Stable

Part of the beauty in betting Week 1 lies in the ability to effectively bet out offseason opinions or projections before the market better adapts to a team’s new circumstances and reality. But certain teams change more than others during the offseason creating a dynamic where teams have higher or lower variance effectively depending on how much is known or believed to be known and stable from the previous season. 

The Lions are a great example of a team with high (relative) certainty:

• 92nd percentile offense in terms of their ability to sustainably move the ball– “Earned Drive Points” (EDP)
• No. 6 offense by EPA per play
• No. 3 offense by yards per play

Choose your efficiency metric and it will reveal a similar story of the Lions as one of the best and most stable offenses in the NFL. They have continuity on the offensive side of the ball, with a third-year QB/OC combo and a healthy offensive line (four-fifths of whom played together last season). There is little reason to think that the success of the previous season(s) won’t sustain itself moving forward, at least not given the health and present information in Week 1.  

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Rams 2024 Outlook Is Volatile

Rams Lack Defensive Disruption Rates & Pressure

Let’s contrast the stability of the Lions with the fragility and uncertainty of the Rams. This was a Rams defense that was middle of the pack by most efficiency metrics but struggled to create pressure last season or disrupt the rhythm of opposing offenses.

Let’s define some terms here to illustrate what we are looking at in the above graph:

• X-Axis: pressure disruption is the rate at which pressure comes quick enough to disrupt a QB’s rhythm and force him off his read.
• Y-Axis: disruption rate is when a defense either creates perfect coverage or when it generates pressure disruption.

Said differently, this chart tracks how well defenses create chaos for a quarterback and make his life hard via disrupting pressure or good coverage. And this was a Rams team that struggled to generate much of either last season, posting well below-average marks. 

Looking ahead to 2024, this is a team that lost key pieces, including all-world Aaron Donald who led the team in these disruption pressures and elevating those around him from the attention brought to defending Donald. Not to mention, much of coverage success stems from the positions coordinators put players in. Losing DC Raheem Morris will hurt an already weak on-paper group. There is little reason to think this defense is getting any better but plenty of reason to believe this unit can get a lot worse, especially relative to how the market is pricing it. 

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How Lions Can Exploit Rams Defensive Concerns

The above points about the Lions’ stability and the Rams’ atrophy coalesce in this conversation about disruption. 

On plays where there was no disruption, aka “Clean Rate,” Jared Goff and the Lions produced a top EPA in the NFL. The base rates of success for these teams would suggest there is some slight value on the Lions, currently , simply by virtue of not properly accounting for the changes on the Rams defense.

While this matchup magnifies the Rams’ struggles to generate much by way of disruption, this is the exact area where the Lions have had remarkable success. Given that this matchup plays perfectly into the Lions’ strengths against what figures to be a bad defense with near certainty, we should have relative certainty that the Lions’ offense will have success. 

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Potential Lions Tail Outcomes For NFL Week 1 Picks

Figuring out the thesis is only part of the equation. It is also important to ensure that the proper thesis is matched to the right market.

What the above suggests is that this Lions offense should be able to score at will against a weak Rams defense that the market has not yet caught up with and is not properly calibrating for the Lions’ matchup advantages. This lends itself to:

• bets on tail outcomes for the Lions team totals
• Lions alt spreads, depending on how one feels about the Rams’ ability to keep up with the Lions.

But given that the Lions tend to front-run teams– again, its good to have some relative certainty of team style–  and win big when playing with a lead, I am particularly bullish on the Lions alt spreads here, as well as the aforementioned bets on Lions totals and perhaps building out some same game parlays that further delineate the story of the Lions offense dominating the Rams. 

My Favorite Lions Alternate Spreads

Click on the odds in the table below to bet on these NFL Week 1 picks.

• Lions -5.5 (+110)
• Lions -9.5 (+200)

Lions Alternate Team Totals

Potential Straight Bets

If you are not interested in tail outcomes for Sunday Night Football, these were the NFL Week 1 picks with traditional pricing available on the spread and team total at the time of publication.