Tonight, the American League Championship Series will play a decisive seventh game, and it might be only the third-best game on the sports calendar. That’s because the NFL will have a Monday Night Football double header, with the Detroit Lions set to host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 7 p.m. ET and the Seattle Seahawks welcoming the Houston Texans at 10 p.m. ET.
For tonight’s dual duel, DraftKings is bringing back its King of the End Zone promotion. If you place a $5 singles bet on a player in the touchdown scorer market and opt in to the contest, you will be eligible to win a share of $2 million in bonus bets if your selected player scores the longest touchdown of the day, regardless of whether or not the bet hits.
With four teams in action, there are many options. Jahmyr Gibbs (-205) is the odds-on favorite to score, but I actually don’t like his chances of being crowned King of the End Zone. Here are two longer shot players that I prefer to Gibbs for a higher potential payout.
King of the End Zone — What You Need to Know
The two images below break down everything you need to know about the King of the End Zone contest:
The promotion is fairly simple: as long as you opt in and place a Singles bet with a stake of at least $5 on a TD Scorer prop bet from your cash or DK Dollars balance prior to the 7:00 p.m. scheduled kickoff time for the Buccaneers-Lions game and don’t cash it out, your bet is eligible to receive a share of the prize pool. Passing touchdowns will not count; if you choose any team’s quarterback, he’ll need to run it in himself. Either team’s D/ST, though not an individual player, is eligible to become the King of the End Zone. Your bet doesn’t have to hit; even if you choose a player to score the first TD and it misses but that player scores the longest touchdown of the day, you’ll still receive your share of the bonus pool within 24 hours of the Texans-Seahawks game ending.
King of the End Zone Preview & Picks | Monday 10/20/25
Players with shortest odds to score a TD:
- Jahmyr Gibbs (-205)
- David Montgomery (-130)
- Amon-Ra St. Brown (-120)
- Rachaad White (+105)
- Mike Evans (+110)
- Emeka Egbuka (+110)
King of the End Zone Picks for Monday 10/22/25: Jayden Higgins and Tez Johnson
Football is a strange and often unpredictable game, so why not go wacky and choose two rookie wideouts to potentially become King of the End Zone on Monday night? Each of these youngsters has shown some flashes in his inaugural pro season, and each has found the end zone, so it’s not like it’s completely out of the blue.
Higgins (+320 to score a touchdown), the 34th overall selection from Iowa State, had the game’s longest touchdown in Houston’s 26-0 throttling of the Tennessee Titans in Week 4, catching a 24-yard pass from C.J. Stroud down the right sideline for his first career score. He then followed that up with a career-best performance the following week against the Baltimore Ravens, catching each of his four targets for 32 yards and playing a career-high 55.7% of the team’s snaps. He has the deepest average depth of target among Texans pass-catchers with at least 10 targets, and Stroud has recorded his third-highest passer rating when throwing to Higgins.
I like his matchup against a Seattle defense that has allowed six touchdowns to wide receivers this season, tied for the 13th-most in football. Pro Football Focus also grades the Seahawks as roughly a league-average coverage unit, giving them the 17th-highest coverage grades. Plus, their best coverage corner, Devon Witherspoon, primarily lines up in the slot and is questionable with a knee injury, while Higgins is a prototypical outside receiver and deep threat. There’s a huge drop-off in coverage ability from Witherspoon to Seattle’s regular outside cornerbacks, Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen. This season, Woolen has allowed a 111.2 passer rating in coverage, by far the worst mark of his career, while Jobe has allowed at least one explosive play in three of the past four weeks.
Johnson had one of the more heart-warming moments of the season last week when he scored his first career touchdown, did a backflip, and incorrectly thought that the MVP chants that he heard were for him, not Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield. The 45-yard bomb, which will arguably go down as Mayfield’s signature moment if the former first overall pick does ultimately win MVP, was the longest score in the Buccaneers’ 30-19 win over the San Francisco 49ers. In that game, Johnson played a career-high 71.7% of the team’s offensive snaps as a result of Tampa Bay’s missing Chris Godwin (fibula), Mike Evans (hamstring), Jalen McMillan (neck), Bucky Irving (foot), and, after the second quarter, Emeka Egbuka (hamstring). Godwin, Irving, and McMillan are all out for tonight’s contest, with Evans and Egbuka both questionable, so he should have a big role again.
I like his matchup against a banged-up Detroit defense. While the Lions have been okay in pass coverage overall, allowing the 15th-fewest yards to wide receivers and posting the sixth-highest coverage grades at Pro Football Focus, they’ve conceded 10 touchdowns to the position, tied for the second-most in football. Second-year cornerback Terrion Arnold won’t play after suffering a shoulder injury in the Week 5 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, and neither will safety Kerby Joseph, who led the NFL with nine interceptions last season and was named to the All-Pro First Team. This season, Detroit also hasn’t been able to generate pressure as frequently as it was last season, which should give Johnson’s deeper routes more time to develop.
