It’s Thursday Night Football and the Denver Broncos are nowhere in sight – how perfect. For this primetime matchup, the Saints are traveling to take on the Cardinals as both teams look to improve on a rough start to the season. But fortunately for the Cardinals, DeAndre Hopkins is back. Kickoff is set for 8:15 pm on Amazon Prime Video, so let’s get right into our Same Game Parlay for Thursday Night Football.
Part of the value in same game parlays, of course, is that all of its components can be correlated if you so choose. However, having a pick that may “go against” another pick increases the output. That is the plan here, as DeAndre Hopkins scoring a touchdown would technically go against the Saints spread pick and the under. Let’s break down each of these legs one by one.
New Orleans Saints +2.5 over Arizona Cardinals (-115)
Even though they failed to cover, the Saints had a lot of injuries and had a strong chance to defeat the Bengals. Despite ranking second in the NFL in terms of net success rate, the Saints are still undervalued in the market. The good news is that Chris Olave will at least be returning this Thursday. Despite having few weapons, Andy Dalton has looked solid this season, ranking 9th in success rate and 14th in EPA per dropback among quarterbacks. The Cardinals are the third-heaviest blitzing team in the NFL, and guess which QB has the highest PFF grade among QBs versus the blitz? Andy Dalton, indeed. When facing a rush, he has never made a play that warranted a turnover, so this is not an anomaly.
There is nothing functional about this Arizona offense. They are tied for lowest in yards per play and dead last in offensive scores per drive compared to expectations. And now that Hollywood Brown is out for several weeks, they are lacking their lone significant danger. With over half of the Cardinals’ total air yards available, Hollywood ranks third in the NFL. Only 8 receptions totaling 20+ air yards or more have been made by Cardinals receivers this season, and Brown has five of them.