NFL player props explained: how to read a prop price next to a model's number

What a player prop is

A prop has two halves. The line is the number the market has chosen to split the outcome on, and it is usually a half number so there is no draw: thirty and a half receiving yards, three and a half receptions. The price is what the market pays on each side of that line, in American odds.

The Props Picker covers four of these markets: passing yards, rushing yards, receiving yards and receptions. A game page lists every market it prices and says how many rows sit on each, best first, and the week's slate page lists every game we have priced.

What "our number" is, and what the flag means

Beside the market price on every row is a percentage of ours for the same line. It is a read, not a price: DataPitch never prints its own odds, so our side of a row is a number and some words and never a quote you could take.

Open a row and the page says what the read rests on. It names our simulated average and median for that player in that market, the line the market set, and his last five games in the same market with the opponent and the date on each. It also says, in its own words, that the read is structural, that it has not yet been graded against results at real market prices, and that it should be treated as our view of the player rather than as a priced offer.

Where our number sits above the market's implied one the row carries a flag, and a game page says up front how many of the rows it prices clear our bar. Where a row does not clear it, the row says so rather than going quiet. There is a filter for showing only the flagged rows, which is the fastest way to see whether a game has anything on it at all.

Why the captured price carries its time

A prop price moves all week, so a price without a timestamp is not a fact about anything. Every game page states the time its prices were taken, in UK time, at the top of the page. Prices are captured before kickoff and are not refreshed during the game.

When a capture found no fresh price for a line, the row says exactly that and shows no price at all. An older price is not quietly carried forward to fill the space, because a stale number wearing a current row is worse than an empty one. Rows also mark a player whose availability is doubtful, with the reason behind the tap.

How the week rolls, and where the results go

The slate is organised by week. The Props Picker's front page is this week's games, each with the kick off, the market line for the game, and how many of its rows carry our flag; tapping one opens the game.

Once a week has finished it gets a results page of its own, with the final scores and what our called rows did, counted row by row. That page is reachable from the slate, and it is the only place on the NFL side where a finished row is looked at again.

Reading a row in twenty seconds

In order, and no further unless something catches: the player and his position, the market and the line, the market price, then our percentage next to the market's. The gap between the two is printed for you, in percentage points, so there is no arithmetic to do on a phone.

If the row is flagged, open it and read three things: our simulated average against the line, his last five in that market, and whether the row carries a note about the man's availability. If our average sits barely the wrong side of the line, that is a row where the number and the line are arguing about very little, and it is usually the one to leave.

The Props Picker also lets you send the top three rows of a game to a slip in one tap. The slip is a list of market prices with the source beside each and never a combined price, because no book or exchange quotes those legs as one ticket.