D.J. Moore TNF Spotlight: Player Props for Thursday Night Football Week 10

Sometimes you just get dealt a bad hand.

There's no shame in it. It's not your fault. Every once in a while, we face a situation that is unavoidably — and unequivocally — stinky.

That, my friends, is the situation we're in with trying to evaluate D.J. Moore props for the first game of the Week 10 slate.

Why Moore, you ask? Well, as my colleague Jason Logan said in his Falcons vs. Panthers predictions article, "Atlanta is attempting to stay in the hunt for the division lead at 4-5, which kind of tells you everything you need to know about this group of teams."

Not only are both of these teams kinda bad, but the Falcons' run game is an unpredictable three-headed monster (and the passing game is non-existent), Carolina's offense is a giant heap of garbage overall, oh and there's messy weather incoming for tonight too.

So pinch your nose, hold your breath, or do whatever it is you need to not get nauseated by the options for TNF prop picks this week — I'm getting into the mud with my free NFL picks and trying to find some value in the NFL odds for a game we might all shut off before halftime.

D.J. Moore TNF prop picks

• Under 60.5 receiving yards
• Over 4.5 receptions
• Longest reception Under 21.5 yards

Click on each pick to jump to the full analysis.

D.J. Moore TNF props

Nothing prime about this time

D.J. Moore started to show signs of life when P.J. Walker took over under center, as he saw more targets per game and has consecutive weeks of real productivity.

Then last week happened, as Walker went 3/10 for 9 yards with two picks (and one Moore target) in the first half against Cincinnati before mercifully getting benched, but that Week 9 debacle highlighted a very important point:

P.J. Walker is not very good as an NFL QB.

Two weeks ago, Walker threw for a career-high 317 yards against these same Atlanta Falcons, with Moore recording a season-high 152 yards, but that was as extreme an outlier as possible.

• That was just the second time ever (in parts of three seasons) that Walker has topped 177 passing yards in a game.
• In his other two starts this year, Walker had a combined 237 passing yards... and has just 306 total passing yards in all of his other 2022 appearances.
  
  
• That game was inside a dome in Atlanta... and Week 10 will be outdoors in Carolina.

Playing outdoors is doubly bad this week, as Hurricane Nicole is expected to roll into Charlotte Thursday night, with the weather forecast showing winds gusting up to 20 mph and a 96% chance of precipitation — which does not make for a good passing game. The Falcons are also the definition of a run-heavy team (against a Carolina Panthers defense that is among the league's worst run-stopping units) that plays at the NFL's second-slowest pace, meaning the Panthers will just not have the ball that much to actually rack up any sort of statistics.

Take away that Week 8 outburst and Moore is averaging just 37.1 receiving yards per game this season, having hit the 60-yard plateau just once. Heck, even that Week 8 game was highly unrepeatable: He had four catches of 19+ yards, including a 62-yarder, in that game alone — and has just five catches of 20+ yards in his other eight games combined.

I think Walker will be less like the Week 8 guy we saw and more like the rest-of-his-career version of himself, which, coupled with messy weather and a likely low time of possession total, doesn't have me enthusiastic that he'll hit the 61-yard mark on Thursday... even against a bad (and banged-up) Atlanta secondary. 

Prop: D.J. Moore Under 60.5 receiving yards (-115)

Short and steady...

The good news (if you can call it that) for Moore is that, again, Walker = more targets.

Through his first five games, with Baker Mayfield as the quarterback, Moore received 36 total targets (7.2 per game). Once Walker took over for an injured Mayfield, Moore saw 28 targets in his next three games (9.33 per contest).

As much as Week 8 was an outlier on the high productivity end, last week was also a bit of a one-off — just on the suckiness scale, so ideally Moore will fall somewhere in between.

Again, that's not an overly positive notion for his yardage total... but his receiving props is a different story. He's caught 16 of 28 targets from Walker this season (57%), including six catches against the Falcons in Week 8 and seven receptions against the Bucs in Week 7.

The potentially messy weather will certainly curb Walker's overall passing success. However, he's still going to attempt some passes — and in an attempt to wash away the taste of the Bengals bungle, the bulk of them should go in the direction of Moore, who is both his preferred safety blanket and the team's best offensive weapon.

Quick math: a 57% catch rate on nine targets would put him at around five receptions, which would be a winning bet against his TNF total of Over 4.5 catches. After recording seven total receptions in his first three games, Moore averaged 5.2 catches per game from Weeks 4-8, topping four catches three times.

It ain't much, but it's an honest day's work. 

Prop: D.J. Moore Over 4.5 receptions (-110)

...with an emphasis on short

Furthermore to the "Over catches, Under yards" narrative, Moore simply doesn't see (or convert) on many deep attempts.

Per Pro Football Focus, just 21.5% of Moore's targets are considered deep (20+), which is 70th among WRs in the league, and his 35.7% catch rate on those passes is 69th.

And again: Moore has eight catches of 20+ yards all season, three of which came in that Week 8 game inside the cozy Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Outside of that game, Moore is averaging just 10.2 yards per reception — which would rank 132nd in the league — and his yards per target overall is 6.32 (93rd among WRs), but plummets to 4.95 (which would be 123rd) without that single-game anomaly. 

Add in high wind gusts and rain? Yeah, I'm not seeing Moore catching any "deep" balls on Thursday.

Prop: D.J. Moore longest reception Under 21.5 yards (-110)

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