Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Giants Prediction: Hit the First Touchdown Scorer in This Wild Card Matchup
Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Giants Prediction: Hit the First Touchdown Scorer in This Wild Card Matchup
Much has been made of the Minnesota Vikings' fraudulence this season. Indeed, the narrative that the Vikings are undeserving of their 13-4 record has been repeated ad nauseam in the media and across NFL discourse. And, in fairness, the narrative holds a lot of merits. The Vikings are a whopping 11-0 in one-score games, a historic feat that is likely the product of rock-solid coaching, clutch execution, and pure luck. They are the first team ever to win 13 games while having a negative point differential. Their defense has been a sieve all season. And yet, despite all of that, the Vikings sit just three wins away from the Super Bowl.
The first of those three wins would need to come on Sunday when the Vikings host the 9-7-1 New York Giants at U.S. Bank Stadium. The Giants share many of the aforementioned 'fraud' qualities of the Vikings—both teams have relied on smoke and mirrors to pull out close games this season, such that neither team "deserves" to have won as many games as they did. As such, it is somewhat fitting that these teams will be squaring off in a playoff game, with a trip to the Divisional Round hanging in the balance.
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For this game, we're taking a look at the first touchdown scorer market. Specifically, our goal is to determine which players in this game have a higher chance to score the first touchdown of the game than their betting odds imply. Here are the two players I believe fit that bill more than any other.
Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Giants Start Time, Where to Watch, and Odds
- Date: Sunday, January 15, 2023
- Start Time: 4:30 pm ET
- Where to Watch: FOX
Click here for the latest Giants vs. Vikings odds
Minnesota Vikings vs. New York Giants First Touchdown Scorer
First TD Scorer: Justin Jefferson (+800) Bet $100 to collect $900 DraftKings has the best odds, click here to bet
To be quite frank, I'm stunned that this is the price on the board for Justin Jefferson. My player model has Jefferson as the best receiver in the league by a fair margin, and I'm not inclined to disagree. Jefferson "only" had eight touchdowns this season, sure. That is undeniably a slightly lower mark than one might expect from a top receiver's season-long stat line. However, I don't buy into the narrative that eight TD mark is even remotely predictive of Jefferson's future touchdown production; he is fantastic at every wide receiver trait, including anything that pertains to scoring TDs.
On top of Jefferson's supernatural ability, this Minnesota offense runs through him. Down the stretch, his usage was at absurdly high levels—Jefferson was targeted 15, 16, and 16 times against the Lions, Colts, and Giants before ending the year in Week 17 with a clunker against the Packers (he didn't play for much of Week 18 due to rest considerations). In that prior game against the Giants, though, Jefferson caught 12 of those 16 targets for 133 yards and a score. While the Giants' secondary will be healthier on Sunday than it was in that initial meeting, it is still a below-average unit. Jefferson to score first at +800 is a near no-brainer for me—this should be closer to +500.
First TD Scorer: Daniel Jones (+1300) Bet $100 to collect $1,400 DraftKings has the best odds, click here to bet
This season, Daniel Jones demonstrated that he deserves recognition as one of the NFL's premier rushing quarterbacks. In 16 games, Jones carried the ball 120 times for 708 yards and seven touchdowns, all marks that rank in the top five for quarterbacks in 2022. Two of those rushing TDs came in the Giants' must-win Week 17 game against the Colts, which ended in a 38-10 blowout victory for New York. This may or may not be a coincidence—it's possible that he was willing to carry the ball more often in a high-leverage game. It's also possible that those scores were a product of variance. If the former is true, though, expect Jones to carry the rock early and often on Sunday—it doesn't get more high leverage than a playoff game.
Now, over the course of the year, Jones' rushing attack came from two sources: designed quarterback runs and improvised scrambles. While this is true for any rushing quarterback, the balance was tilted towards the improvisation side for Jones, meaning that he has a chance to score on any passing play in the red zone (as well as on any designed run, naturally). This gives us more chances to cash this bet on the Giants' first drive (assuming that the Vikings don't score first, which they very well might). No bet in this market is ever going to be anything close to a lock, but I do think that this is worth a shot at 13-1.