This game tonight may set the sport back 50+ years, but the beauty about the NFL in 2023 compared to 1973 is that we can build out a New England Patriots vs. Pittsburgh Steelers same game parlay pick to make things interesting!
Due to the lack of expected offense in this one, this three-leg SGP can pay for your weekend. Let’s dive in!
Patriots vs. Steelers Betting Lines
- Spread
Steelers -6 - Moneyline
Patriots +205, Steelers -250 - Total
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Patriots vs. Steelers Same Game Parlay Pick
We here at Soppe HQ like to encourage responsible gaming, and in that vein, I’ll always offer you a trivia question off the top of these articles. Pose this question to a buddy you are watching the game with: answer correctly, and you pay for the SGP; misfire, and he/she is on the hook.
Trivia Question: The Patriots are on a five-game losing streak and have totaled 47 points in the process. How many times did the 2007 Patriots surpass that number in a single game?
We begin with the obvious: This is a bad game for fantasy football managers and people who enjoy watching scoring. Of course, anything could happen, but with a historic total and two teams that lack firepower, this doesn’t project as an exciting game.
At DraftKings, “any team to score three unanswered times” is a prop that is available for most games, and the price doesn’t change a ton outside of games with massive spreads.
- Lions/Bears: “No” pays +125
- Vikings/Raiders: “No” pays +130
- Panthers/Saints: “No” pays +135
Those are three games that had this prop listed for Sunday, and they all fall into the same range. I assumed that we’d be taxed for the low-scoring projection of the Patriots/Steelers, considering that it isn’t a lock that either team even scores three times, let alone three in a row.
The Patriots are the first team since 1938 to lose 3 straight games where they allowed 10 points or fewer.
yep, 1938 pic.twitter.com/lzTjuBP42e
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 3, 2023
Wrong. “No” pays +135 by itself and is the first leg of building out my SGP.
Now, onto the nerdy number crunching. On the New England side of things, the game plan appears to be simple: The fewer possessions a game has, the less our talent deficiency impacts the final result. This is why they own a top-five rush rate over expectation and why their lead back has carried the ball 19.3 times per game over their past three.
With Rhamondre Stevenson on the shelf for this game, Ezekiel Elliott is thrust into that role. We pretty clearly don’t have Peak Zeke anymore, but I’m not sure we need that version of him to help us out here.
In his four games with at least 10 carries this season, he’s picking up 3.8 yards per carry. Combine that with the fact that subjective “plodders” are averaging 4.4 yards per carry against the Steelers this season and we are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.0 yards per carry as a reasonable expectation, right?
If that’s the case, we don’t need anywhere near those 19.3 carries to have this leg cash.
When the Steelers have the ball, they figure to take some shot plays. In his limited action this season, Mitchell Trubisky’s aDOT is 31.8% higher than that of Kenny Pickett, a note of interest for George Pickens’ managers.
The Pats own the eighth-highest opponent aDOT this season, and during their five-game losing streak, we’ve seen the primary deep threat on the opposing team make at least one splash play (listed is their longest catch of the game when facing NE):
- Quentin Johnston (Week 13): 27 yards
- Jalin Hyatt (Week 12): 41
- Alec Pierce (Week 10): 21
- Jahan Dotson (Week 9): 33
- Tyreek Hill (Week 8): 42
Pickens isn’t Hill, but I’d argue that his raw skill set ranks above average for this list, and if he can haul in one pass of significant yardage, we are in business!
For his career, Pickens averages 74.2 receiving yards per game in games in which he hauls in a 20+ yard pass, clearing 55 yards in 77.8% of those contests.
Do I have a pair of “overs” in a game with the lowest total in recent memory? I do, but the numbers are low enough that the projected point total can still prove accurate, even if this bet comes through!
- Trivia Answer: Four times. The 2007 Patriots averaged 36.8 points per game for the regular season and cleared 47 points on four occasions (including three straight games!).
- Same Game Parlay Pick: George Pickens over 54.5 receiving yards, Ezekiel Elliott over 44.5 rushing yards, No team scores three unanswered times
- Odds: +800 (at DraftKings)
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