- The Jets make the case for market value: New York has paired a slightly above-average offense with one of the league's better defenses through two games.
- Geno Smith has benefited from better protection: Smith has been one of the NFL's least-disrupted quarterbacks and ranks 11th in EPA when kept clean.
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Many NFL bettors start with individual markets — spreads, totals or player props — and ask, “Which spread looks good?” or “Which totals stand out this week?” It’s a bottom-up approach: Start with the bet, then decide whether the underlying game script supports it.
In this space, we’ll work in the opposite direction. Each week, we’ll focus on one game and take a top-down approach, starting with the broader picture of how the teams and players are performing and what the data suggests about the matchup. From there, we’ll identify the betting markets that best align with that expected game script.
The goal is to form a view of how the game is likely to unfold first, then find the spreads, totals and props that offer the best ways to bet on that outcome.
New York Jets moneyline vs. Detroit Lions
Let us begin, as always, by looking at the team fundamentals to set the frame for our analysis.
Above is a chart showing weighted EPA, courtesy of Timo Riske, which has the Jets and Lions as slightly above-average offenses through two weeks. Defensively, the Lions rank among the league’s worst, while the Jets rank among the best.
Here's a look at drive-level Earned Drive Points (EDP), which attempts to capture the repeatability and sustainability of drive success. Choose your metric, and it reveals essentially the same story through two games.
We don’t want to overreact to such small samples, nor are we looking to crown the Jets a top-five defense after two weeks. But those games still represent the most recent valuable information we have, and that matters when considering what the market is pricing.
The market currently has the Lions at roughly a 73.5% win probability, which is almost exactly where they were a week ago. That suggests the market has moved very little from its prior view of Geno Smith and the Jets being one of the worst teams in the NFL.
Inpredictable, which uses market ratings and look-ahead lines, has the Jets as the 27th-best team overall, ranking 24th on offense and 21st on defense. Through that lens, and relative to where the market is setting expectations, we can begin to make the bullish case for the Jets.
As we have discussed — perhaps far too much — much of the Jets’ pricing, and the prior the market has been reluctant to move from, stems from Smith’s horrific 2025 season. There was a world in which Smith was simply toast, and the Jets’ offense would be terrible. That world still exists, but two games into 2026, we have at least some evidence suggesting it is becoming less likely.
The counterargument to Smith simply being bad was always that his situation heavily influenced his 2025 performance. He faced disruption on nearly 55% of his dropbacks last season. This year so far?
Smith has been one of the least-disrupted quarterbacks in the NFL, and he has taken advantage, ranking 11th in EPA when kept clean. More important than the performance itself — which is in line with Smith’s career — is the early evidence that this offense is preventing disruption at a much higher rate.
And despite Smith holding onto the ball for a long time, he has been one of the least-pressured quarterbacks in the NFL. The offensive line has held up remarkably well, particularly former first-round pick Olumuyiwa Fashanu at left tackle, who has the second-highest PFF grade at the position through two games.
His performance could be critical against Aidan Hutchinson and the Lions’ defense.
Matchup Angles
And now Smith gets a matchup with a Lions defense that has ranked near the bottom of the league in generating disruption so far this season. Given the state of Detroit’s secondary, there is also little reason to expect dramatic improvement based purely on player development. Rock Ya-Sin, D.J. Reed, Chuck Clark and Roger McCreary are all veterans, not young players who might reasonably be expected to make significant leaps as the season progresses.
What’s more, a defense that has been so good against the run in previous years has struggled early this season. Only the Broncos have been worse, and their numbers were heavily influenced by Kenneth Walker’s monster Week 1 performance. I don’t necessarily expect the Lions to finish with one of the worst run defenses in the league, but they have been vulnerable enough that the Jets should find themselves in plenty of favorable situations — something particularly important for a quarterback in Smith who is more sensitive to unfavorable situations than the typical quarterback.
Bottom line: The market has not moved much on the Jets, but with the offense as healthy as it is now, I don’t believe this is the 25th-best offense in the NFL — certainly not in a matchup against a Lions defense that has struggled both to cover and generate disruption. And if the Jets’ defense really is an above-average unit — with David Bailey looking every bit as good as advertised — there is even more room for New York to outperform current market expectations. That creates an opportunity to exploit a potential mispricing before the market fully adjusts.
As we discussed in Week 1, at this point in the season I want to think about how the market might price this same matchup six weeks from now, with six more games of information available. From there, the question is which direction that hypothetical line is more likely to move and how far it could reasonably go.
In other words, as we continue to update our priors, I think there is considerably more room for the fair price of a hypothetical rematch to move toward the Jets than away from them.
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