3 NFL Player Prop Bets for Wild Card Sunday

Player props can be useful in a variety of ways, from taking advantage of them straight up within the betting market to measuring a player's potential to produce in daily fantasy football.

Here we'll focus on utilizing our projections and a slew of other tools and simulations to help make money betting player props. For this article, we are using the odds provided at FanDuel Sportsbook to pinpoint spots where value can be had this week.

The prop-betting experience on FanDuel Sportsbook is getting even more fun. You can track your player props with real-time updates and place in-game props with ease.

Each and every week I'll be bringing separate prop bets articles for Monday Night Football, Thursday Night Football, and the Sunday main slate.

Note: Betting lines and our player projections may change after this article is published.

Devin Singletary Any Time Touchdown (+135)

The Buffalo Bills host the Miami Dolphins to kick off the Sunday slate of Wild Card Weekend!

As 13.5-point home favorites, the Bills are expected to put up plenty of points and control the game. They have a 28.50 implied team total, which is the highest of any team in action this weekend, so yeah, we want to find some touchdown scorers from their team.

The Dolphins' defense was very weak against the passing game, allowing the sixth-most yards per game (234.8), and were rather tough against the run, where they allowed the fourth-fewest rushing yards per game (103). However, that doesn't tell the entire story of their defense.

Miami's defense allowed opposing offenses to score a touchdown on 59.32% of red zone trips, which was the 10th worst in the league. The Dolphins' defense allowed only 11 rushing touchdowns this season, but all 11 of them came from the red zone. Not to mention the fact they were tied for the most touchdowns (6) and the seventh-most receiving yards (700) allowed to running backs this season.

On the other side, the Bills' offense saw 60.0% of their red zone trips result in a touchdown, which was the 10th best in the league. What does this all mean, and why does this have me looking to Devin Singletary (+135) for a touchdown this weekend?

To start, Singletary played on 65.5% of the offensive snaps while running a route on 49.8% of drop backs, which led to a 9.4% target share and a 9.2% red zone target share. Those are all modest numbers across the board, but when we look at his red zone rushing share, we see that he led the team at 45.5%.

Here's the picture I'm trying to paint. The Dolphins' defense is good against the run but bad against the pass, so Josh Allen -- who is amazing -- can move the ball downfield into the red zone via the passing game. Once in the red zone, the Dolphins have proven throughout the season they struggle and allow teams -- and running backs specifically -- to find their way into the endzone at a high rate.

This is a great spot for Singletary to cash in on his touchdown prop to start the Bills' playoff journey.

Kirk Cousins Over 36.5 Passing Attempts (-114)

Next up, the Minnesota Vikings are hosting the New York Giants. We see a 48.5-point over/under here, which is the highest of any game this weekend.

If you've been following the NFL this season, you should already know the Minnesota Vikings are incapable of playing in a normal game. They are constantly getting in close, back-and-forth games, which is what is expected here with a 3.0-point spread.

What do we know about the Vikings' offense this season? They love to pass the ball and did so with a 64.02% pass-play percentage, which was the third-highest in the league. This led to Cousins posting the fourth-most total passing attempts this season (643) for an average of 37.8 attempts per game.

His Week 18 game against the Chicago Bears was a bit of an outlier where he had only 20 passing attempts -- along with Week 11 against the Dallas Cowboys, where he had only 23 passing attempts. Those are clear outliers for Cousins, and if we remove them from his sample size, we have 600 passing attempts in 15 games for an average of 40 attempts per game.

Those 40 attempts are more along the lines of what we should see from Cousins this weekend, and that won't be anything new for him; he posted 40-plus passing attempts eight times this season. Cousins has also been legitimately good this season with 81.08 Passing Net Expected Points (NEP), which was the ninth-best in the league.

All of this has Cousins projected for 38.83 passing attempts this weekend -- over his prop total.

Joe Mixon Over 23.5 Receiving Yards (-114)

Finally, the Sunday Night game brings us a prop from the Cincinnati Bengals.

That would be Joe Mixon over 23.5 receiving yards against a familiar foe, the Baltimore Ravens. The Bengals are 8.5-point home favorites in a game that features a modest 40.5-point over/under. I'm not expecting a massive amount of scoring in this game, but this is still one of my favorite props on the entire weekend.

When it comes to the Ravens' defense, they were elite against the rushing game this season, allowing only 92.1 yards per game. Without a doubt, they're one of the best run-stopping teams in the league. However, they were bad against the passing game -- specifically against running backs in the passing game.

The Ravens allowed the seventh-most receptions (93) and the sixth-most receiving yards (729) to running backs this season. If the Bengals aren't able to move the ball on the ground, they will turn to Joe Burrow and the passing game. They did just that this season with the fifth-highest (62.11%) pass-play percentage in the league.

Mixon ended the season with a 14.0% target share, which helped him post an average of 31.5 receiving yards per game (fifth-highest among running backs this season).

With all of that said, Mixon is projected for 28.28 receiving yards this weekend, putting him over his prop.