At long last, the NFL playoffs are here. The 14-team extravaganza kicks off with a three-day Wild Card Round spectacular, with two of the NFC’s three games set to take place on Saturday. At 4:30 p.m. ET, the No. 5 Los Angeles Rams will travel to take on the No. 4 Carolina Panthers, followed by an intra-division matchup between the No. 7 Green Bay Packers and the No. 2 Chicago Bears.
To celebrate the playoff opener, DraftKings is bringing back the King of the End Zone promotion. If you opt in to the promotion and place a singles bet of at least $5 on a player in a touchdown market and he scores the longest touchdown between Saturday’s two games, you win a share of $3 million in bonus bets. The last time this promotion was run, San Francisco 49ers wideout Jauan Jennings took home the crown with his game-winning 42-yard score.
In that contest, though, there were just two teams to choose from (the 49ers and the Bears). Now, there are four. Below, I’ll take you through my favorite options for Saturday’s King of the End Zone contest.
King of the End Zone — What You Need to Know
The rules of the promotion are pretty simple: as long as the player you placed a singles bet on in the “TD Scorers” market scores the longest touchdown of the day, and that bet was worth $5 or more and was placed from either your cash balance or DK Dollars, you will win a share of bonus bets. All qualifying bets must be placed before the start of the Green Bay vs. Chicago game. The bet doesn’t have to hit in order to qualify.
Passing touchdowns are ineligible for this promotion, so if you want to pick Caleb Williams — for instance — he’ll have to run it in himself. Despite not being an individual player, D/ST is eligible to become King of the End Zone.
King of the End Zone Preview & Picks | Saturday, Jan. 10
Players with the shortest odds to score a TD:
- Davante Adams (-140)
- Kyren Williams (-130)
- Josh Jacobs (-125)
- Puka Nacua (-110)
- D’Andre Swift (+145)
King of the End Zone Picks
There are three basic considerations for King of the End Zone: the player’s likelihood of scoring a touchdown, the player’s likelihood of scoring a long touchdown, and how many other DraftKings users will have chosen that player, since a user’s share of bonus bets is tied to how popular their pick was. For instance, Jennings’ King of the End Zone victory netted users $106 in bonus bets, since 18,873 bettors selected him.
Of course, a player can’t score the game’s longest touchdown if he doesn’t score at all, so it’s not a surprise that two of the players who appear as part of my selections also appear on the list above, and the other just misses it.
1. Josh Jacobs (-140 Anytime TD)
Jacobs hasn’t been quite the same since suffering a bone bruise in his knee on November 16 — though he did take 20 carries for 86 yards and a touchdown in a Week 14 win over the Bears — but after sitting out Week 18, he has spoken positively about the progress he’s made and he wasn’t listed with any injury designation. If he’s fully healthy, it’s hard to deny how talented Jacobs is: he has four touchdowns of 14 yards or longer this season, including a 40-yarder against the Denver Broncos that was the longest score of that game. He’s posted among the five best Pro Football Focus grades at his position in three of the past four seasons, and he’s capable of making an impact either on the ground or through the air.
Chicago’s defense isn’t quite a championship-level unit yet. While the Bears have allowed the eighth-fewest rushing yards to running backs this season — one of which was a two-yarder to Jacobs — they’ve also allowed the fifth-most receiving scores and, most critically, the fourth-most yards per carry. Only eight other teams have given up more 20-plus-yard runs than the Bears have. One of those rushes was Ashton Jeanty’s Week 2 score, and Jeanty had a breakaway rate 4.5 percentage points lower than Jacobs’. Jacobs was particularly solid at forcing missed tackles, helping him mitigate one of Chicago’s relative strengths.
2. Puka Nacua (-110 Anytime TD Scorer)
While Nacua is likely to be one of — if not the — most frequently-selected players as part of the promotion, there’s a good reason: he’s arguably the best receiver in the league. While he’s not quite as much of a touchdown threat as Adams, who led all of football with 14 scores, Nacua (10) wasn’t too far behind him. He finished the regular season fourth in the league in targets, first in receptions, sixth in touchdowns, first in success rate, and fifth in catch rate (among wide receivers). Nacua combines unparalleled reliability with big-play ability: he had six scores of 20 yards or more during the regular season, and he had a 50-yard touchdown in a 2024 playoff game.
To be fair, Carolina actually has a pretty good secondary. The Panthers have allowed the 12th-fewest FPTS per game to wide receivers, as well as the eighth-fewest touchdowns, and they’ve actually given up the seventh-fewest 20-yard-plus receptions. They also held Nacua to just six catches for 72 yards — one of his worst performances of the season — in Week 13. However, Carolina predominantly runs zone defense, and Nacua has averaged a league-high 4.05 yards per route run and scored five touchdowns against zones. Plus, the fact that Nacua lines up in the slot on approximately one-third of his snaps could keep him away from the Panthers’ lone elite coverage corner, Mike Jackson.
3. Tetairoa McMillan (+180 Anytime TD)
McMillan falls just outside the top five by shortest touchdown-scoring odds, but five of his seven touchdowns have come in the last seven weeks, so he’s trending in the right direction. He only made one reception when these teams faced off, but it was a 43-yard score on a critical fourth down late in the game on which he made Emmanuel Forbes look silly. McMillan, like Nacua, combines sure hands with big-play ability, as each of his last three touchdowns have come from more than 20 yards out. McMillan’s score wasn’t the longest of that game (Jackson’s 48-yard pick-six was), but the other two long touchdowns were.
The Rams, meanwhile, are beatable through the air despite recording the league’s highest coverage grades. This season, they’ve actually allowed the 14th-most receiving yards, 14th-most receiving touchdowns, and only the 12th-fewest yards per catch. In particular, they’ve conceded the 13th-most 20-plus-yard catches. McMillan should have a decent matchup against Cobie Durant, Los Angeles’ best outside corner, given that Durant ranks just 38th among 111 qualified cornerbacks by PFF’s coverage grades. He’s also projected to see some snaps against Forbes, who ranks just 82nd.
