It’s never too early to start thinking about the NFL. Heck, we’re less than 100 days away from Week 1 and training camps will be open before you know it. It’s basically September already.
In that spirit, I’m going to be breaking down a few of my favorite touchdown props for the upcoming season. So let’s find pay dirt — both on the field and on the DraftKings Sportsbook.
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Regular Season Passing Touchdowns
Dak Prescott Over 30.5 (+110)
People tend to have really strong opinions about Prescott, which I guess comes with the territory of being the quarterback of the Cowboys. However, I feel like the former fourth-round pick’s exploits can sometimes get a little overshadowed in the media circus. Prescott is good. Often very good — as evidenced by his league-leading 36 touchdown passes last season. Prescott’s only managed to play a full schedule of games twice since 2020, yet he’s managed to soar over this prop in both of those campaigns.
Last year wasn’t a fluke, either. If anything, Prescott underachieved in the touchdown department. With Dallas leading the NFL in red zone trips per contest (4.2), Prescott finished with a league-high 104 passing attempts inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. For context, only two other QBs racked up more than 80 red zone passes last season. That meant Prescott wound up with a staggering 41.4 expected touchdowns per Pro Football Focus, nearly eight scores clear of the next-closest pivot. Mike McCarthy is still calling plays. CeeDee Lamb and Brandin Cooks are still on the roster. If Prescott stays healthy, I don’t see why he doesn’t easily surpass this total again in 2024.
Regular Season Receiving Touchdowns
Jake Ferguson Over 5.5 (+120)
You could say these first two bets are correlated. Take everything I just said about the idyllic passing environment in Dallas and apply it to Ferguson. The 25-year-old was drowning in high-leverage targets in his sophomore campaign, eventually finishing the season with the fifth-most red zone targets in football (23). You read that right. Not the fifth-most among tight ends — the fifth-most of any skill position player in the league. Ferguson only trailed the likes of Lamb, Davante Adams, Calvin Ridley and Tyreek Hill.
At 6’5, Ferguson is certainly an imposing target in the end zone. He also almost never leaves the field for an offensive unit that finished 2023 with the league’s sixth-highest pass rate over expectation (+2.7%). Ferguson found the end zone only five times last year despite being tied with Travis Kelce for the most expected touchdowns at his position (7.0). At plus-money, I’ll take a chance things normalize for Ferguson in 2024.
Regular Season Rushing Touchdowns
Saquon Barkley Over 6.5 (-110)
There’s a lot of factors to unpack with this one. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. We all know how this could go wrong. Barkley’s only played a full schedule twice in his career and he’s never eclipsed 300 carries. He’s not exactly known for his voluminous workload. There’s also the matter of the Tush Push. The Brotherly Shove. The play that helped Jalen Hurts lead the NFL in rushing touchdowns from inside the five-yard line (13) and rank sixth in rushing attempts inside that same zone (16). There’s a reason D’Andre Swift had one of the largest gaps between his actual rushing touchdown total and his expected total in 2023.
Yet, things are a little different in Philadelphia heading into the new season. Namely, Jason Kelce is no longer under center for the Eagles. I won’t sit here and say I know exactly how that’s going to affect the Tush Push’s effectiveness — I just know that it will. Hurts was also banged up for majority of last year, an injury that caused Philadelphia’s offense to flame out in the back-half of the schedule and in the Wild Card round. Maybe Barkley was brought in to protect the team’s Pro Bowl QB? Maybe Nick Sirianni will be a little less willing to send his starting pivot plunging into an array of linemen in 2024? The Eagles ranked top 10 in both red zone drives per game (3.4) and rushing touchdown rate (44.0%) last season. This could be a place where Barkley and his stats thrive if given the right opportunities.
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All odds provided by DraftKings Sportsbook, lines and odds subject to change.
