Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen looks to help keep his team's winning streak alive as he faces the Pittsburgh Steelers on Wild Card Weekend, and we offer our best Josh Allen NFL player prop predictions based on the best NFL odds.
Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills have endured quite the rollercoaster season in 2023, and their playoff matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers has already been defined by chaos ahead of their meeting on Monday as part of NFL Wild Card Weekend.
The Steelers won their final three regular-season games to finish 10-7 and keep head coach Mike Tomlin's streak of finishing .500 or better in every season with the Steelers intact. That winning streak coincided with inserting third-string quarterback Mason Rudolph as the starter, as Mitch Trubisky was ineffective in place of the injured Kenny Pickett.
The Buffalo Bills enter the playoffs amid the NFL's lo ngest winning streak (five games), and they have seemingly been in playoff mode for over a month, needing every one of those five wins to clinch a playoff berth and an unlikely AFC East title.
Because of a blizzard and subsequent State of Emergency declared in Buffalo, this game was moved from Sunday at 1 p.m. ET to Monday at 4:30. Still, weather – especially cold temperatures and winds – are expected to be a major story of Monday's game.
To accompany our Steelers vs. Bills prediction and Steelers-Bills NFL player props, here are our best Josh Allen NFL player prop predictions (odds via our best NFL betting sites; pick confidence based on a 1-to-5-star scale).
Josh Allen NFL player prop predictions for Wild Card Weekend
- Josh Allen Over 29.5 passing attempts (-110 via DraftKings) ????
- Josh Allen Under 0.5 interceptions (+105 via BetMGM) ???
- Josh Allen a nytime touchdown scorer (-105 via BetMGM) ???
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Josh Allen player props
Had this Steelers-Bills game been played on Sunday as regularly scheduled, the person it likely would have impacted the most would have been Allen, as the wind gusts would have consistently been around 30 mph. However, Monday's forecast calls for much less wind (at most 15 mph gusts), which means offensive coordinator Joe Brady will likely not be as conservative as he would have been in worse weather.
Allen has attempted 30-plus passes in five of the last seven games, and will likely be able to find holes against a Steelers defense that will play primarily zone coverage. Per ESPN Stats & Info, Allen has completed 75% of his passes and averaged 8.2 yards per attempt on throws between the numbers over the last two games, while Pittsburgh has allowed 8.0 yards per attempt on passes between the numbers, which ranks in the bottom-six of the league.
FanDuel offers a slightly worse O/U of 30.5 pass attempts for Over backers, so we are headed to DraftKings for the best value.
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Though Pittsburgh's defense finished the regular season tied for 11th in interceptions (16), we are too tempted by the plus-money odds at BetMGM for Allen to play interception-free football, as it is the only one of our best sports betting sites offering better than +100 odds for this wager.
Allen's 18 interceptions were second to Sam Howell's 21 among all quarterbacks in the regular season, and he went only three games without an interception this se ason. However, two of those three games were against playoff teams (Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins), and Pittsburgh's defense without T.J. Watt is much less fearsome than when he plays.
Per Fantasy Life's Ian Hartitz, the Steelers ranked fourth in EPA allowed per play in 10 games when Watt was healthy and ranked 30th in the same metric in the seven games that he missed.
Allen was contacted 178 times last season, the fourth-most among all quarterbacks. Thus, the Bills coaching staff made a conscious effort to not use him in as many designed runs early in the season, to keep him as healthy as possible.
However, when their season was on the line much of the last month, Allen started to take on more responsibility. The only three games in which he had double-digit carries came within the final five weeks.
Allen had at least one rushing touchdown in 12 games this season, and his 10 ga mes with a passing and rushing touchdown set an NFL single-season record. He came into this season with the highest percentage of his team's rushing yards by a quarterback over the last two seasons (34%), and he was also tied for the highest percentage (84%) of a team's offensive touchdowns (passing and/or rushing) in 2022.
Thus, in the team's most important game to this point, we expect the Bills coaching staff to let the bruising Allen find the end zone when close to the goal line again.
BetMGM is the only sportsbook offering a better price than -110, and this wager is juiced as low as -121 at BetRivers.
See our Esten McLaren's anytime touchdown scorer predictions.
Josh Allen player prop picks made 1/14/2023 at 12:28 a.m. ET.
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