NFL Player Props
Last updated September 8, 2026
Football is the hardest major sport to read a prop hit rate in, and it is worth understanding why before you lean on one. A 17-game regular season means a full year of NFL data is smaller than three weeks of baseball. Teams play once a week, so a "last 10 games" window reaches back over two months — long enough for an offensive coordinator to change, a starting quarterback to change, or a player to return from injury as a different athlete.
That does not make the numbers useless. It means the window you choose matters more here than in any other sport we cover, and that a five-game NFL sample is genuinely five games — not a rounding error in a long season.
Game script drives almost everything
More than in any other sport, NFL prop outcomes are decided by whether a team is winning or losing. A team ahead by two scores in the fourth quarter runs the ball to burn clock. A team behind by two scores throws on every down. The same running back can see 22 carries or 9 depending entirely on a scoreline nobody could predict at kickoff.
This is why a quarterback facing a bad defence sometimes badly misses a passing yards line: his team went up early, stopped needing to throw, and he watched the fourth quarter from the sideline with a clipboard. The matchup was right and the prop still lost.
When you see a hit rate that swings wildly game to game rather than sitting in a consistent band, game script is usually the reason. Check whether the misses cluster in blowouts.
Passing yards, completions and attempts
Passing yards are total yards on completed passes. Sacks do not subtract from this number — sack yardage comes off the quarterback's rushing total instead, which is why a QB rushing line can sit surprisingly low or even negative for a pocket passer behind a bad offensive line.
Completions and attempts are volume markets, and they track game script more tightly than passing yards do. A quarterback can throw 45 times for modest yardage in a losing effort and clear an attempts line while missing a yardage line in the same game.
Rushing yards
Yards gained carrying the ball. Two things distort this line more than people expect.
First, quarterback kneel-downs count as negative rushing yards, so a QB who takes three knees to end a half loses real yardage from his total. Second, a single long run can clear an entire line by itself — a back can be stuffed for 15 carries and then break one 60-yard run, turning a comfortable under into a loss on one play.
That second point is the argument for reading the hit rate rather than the average. An average tells you a back gained 70 yards a game; the hit rate tells you whether he actually cleared 70 in most of those games or whether two explosive runs are carrying the mean.
Receiving yards and receptions
Receiving yards are the most volatile market on the NFL board. A deep threat can go four catches for 130 yards one week and one catch for 8 the next, without doing anything differently — he ran the same routes and the ball went elsewhere.
Receptions are far steadier, because they track target volume rather than explosive plays. A slot receiver who sees eight targets a game will catch five or six most weeks. This is the clearest example in football of two markets on the same player behaving nothing alike: his receptions hit rate can be strong while his yardage hit rate is a coin flip.
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High target share, short average depth — receptions are the more predictable market.
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Low target share, deep average depth — yardage swings hard, and hit rate matters far more than the average.
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A tight end's usage often changes week to week with formation and opponent, more than a wide receiver's does.
Anytime touchdown
A yes/no market rather than a number: does the player score at least one touchdown. It is driven almost entirely by goal-line role, which is not the same thing as overall usage.
A back who gains 90 yards a game between the 20s but comes off the field inside the five is a poor anytime-TD bet despite the strong yardage profile. Conversely, a short-yardage specialist with 30 total yards a game can be a strong one. Touchdowns concentrate in a handful of players per team, and the list is not the same as the list of players who accumulate yardage.
What this means for the window control
For NFL props specifically, we would suggest reading both the 5-game and the longer windows and treating the gap between them as information rather than noise.
A five-game NFL window covers over a month, which is long enough that role changes show up in it. A 14-game window covers most of a season and will still include a version of the player from before a coordinator change, an injury, or a trade. When those two disagree sharply on a football player, something structural usually changed, and the player's game log is where you find it.
A caveat about the offseason and early weeks
NFL props are absent from this site through most of June, July and August because the sport is not in season and no book is posting lines. When it returns, the first weeks of a season carry a specific trap: hit rates computed over a small handful of games will look extreme in both directions simply because the sample is tiny.
A player who is 3 for 3 is not a 100% proposition. Early-season numbers deserve more scepticism than the same figure in November, and that is a limitation of the data rather than something a longer window can fix.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on the NFL slate is computed the same way, and the full explanation — what a hit rate counts, how the window changes the answer, and what the numbers cannot tell you — is on our
methodology page. If a market term above is unfamiliar, the
glossary defines every one we cover.
Nothing here is betting advice. We are not a sportsbook, we take no wagers, and a historical rate is a description of the past rather than a prediction. If gambling stops being fun, help is free and confidential: call or text 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) in the US.