Welcome to the Week 15 edition of Panthers Picks & Props, where our friend Cort Smith will run down his favorite Panthers-related bets and fantasy plays each week. Cort is a lead writer at RotoViz and the founder of Bet the Prop, a site specializing in the emergent player prop betting market. As of July 26, sports gambling is legal at sportsbooks in Cherokee, North Carolina – even though the sportsbook isn’t technically open up there, that’s not to mention the myriad of online options emerging – we’re not here to judge, we’re here to make you some money.
The Panthers may be playing out the string with an eye towards 2020, but thanks to props and DFS, there’s no such thing as a meaningless game for us. Coming off a thrashing at the hands of the resurgent Rams, it’s certainly a game with immense meaning for the Seahawks, who are just one game back of the division lead and a first-round bye.
They come into Carolina as 6.5-point favorites, setting up yet another game script where the Panthers are pushed into a passing frenzy while playing from behind. That’s where we start with our first prop play of the week on Kyle Allen, before taking a look Chris Carson and his buttercup matchup against this reeling run defense.
We’ll round things out with a number of DFS Panthers plays, including looks at D.J. Moore, Ian Thomas & Curtis Samuel.
Kyle Allen
Over 252.5 Passing Yards (-119 @ Pinnacle)
Note: A similar line should be available at domestic bookmakers like DraftKings and FanDuel by Saturday morning.
The script has been the same for Allen and the Panthers for more than a month now — an avalanche of passes in a failed comeback bid.
Over the last five games, Allen put up more pass attempts (43.2/game) than any QB not named Dak Prescott. He’s averaged 291.8 passing yards per game in that stretch; that’s fourth-most, an impressive feat, considering his 6.8 yards per attempt ranks just 20th.
Allen has eclipsed our target of 252.5 yards in five straight games, and this one sets up for more of the same. Seattle comes in as TD-favorites and fields one of the heavier pass-funnel defenses in the league.
With the Seahawks allowing the fourth-fewest RB carries but the third-most passing attempts against, Air Allen is once again cleared for liftoff.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Hawks field one of the league’s worst pass rushes with a 4.3% sack rate. Allen has struggled under pressure, but that shouldn’t be an issue this week. QBs facing Seattle are averaging 282.9 passing yards per game, and unless the Panthers can finally find a way to play with a lead, Allen will once again have more than enough volume to hit a passing prop like this.
Chris Carson
Over 0.5 Rushing TDs (-122 @ Pinnacle)
Photo Credit: Jeremy Brevard/USA TODAY Sports
Panthers fans might want to go on and skip ahead to the DFS section because this part won’t be pretty. Carolina is fielding a historically bad run defense, particularly in the TD department. They’re given up 1.62 RB rushing TDs per game, the worst mark of any team over the past decade, and it’s not particularly close.
- Despite only playing 13 games so far, the Panthers have already given up more rushing TDs to RBs (21) than all but three teams over the last 10 years.
- They’re on pace to give up 25.8 rushing scores. No team has given up 26 or more rushing scores since… well, I don’t know actually, since Pro Football Reference only keeps track going back 20 years to 1999.
It’s been decades since we’ve seen RBs score on a defense at this rate, which is all the more impressive (or pathetic, depending on your perspective) considering that teams are passing running far less often in 2019 than they were in 1999.
If guys like Dare Ogunbawale and Qadree Ollison can punch it in versus Carolina, I like Carson’s odds of finding paydirt at least once.
DFS Slants
- The market has caught up to D.J. Moore’s exploits of late, but at $6,600 on DraftKings he’s still a screaming value and priced cheaper than Tyler Lockett, who’s averaged 4.8 fantasy points per game over the last month. Moore should see plenty of Trey Flowers, Seattle’s weakest cornerback. He’s got a nice floor for cash games and plenty of ceiling for GPPs.
- We may have undersold Ian Thomas ($3,100 on DK) when we called him a solid DFS punt play last week. An athletic specimen out of Indiana, Thomas was the third-most targeted TE in the league last week (10) and commanded a whopping 40% of Kyle Allen’s pass attempts. Seattle is a gorgeous draw — only the Arizona Cardinals have allowed more DK points to TEs.
- Curtis Samuel’s season has been a disappointment, but the underlying usage is there. Samuel ranks sixth among all WRs in air yards but just 47th in actual yards. These things tend to regress to the mean, and I suspect Samuel is due for a big game before the year is through. At $4,400 on DK, you could do much worse in GPPs.
