Pigeon Pick Vol. 1 | No. 4

The first Monday Night Football game of the 2023 NFL season will be the stage for our Bills vs. Jets prediction. Aaron Rodgers will make complete his transformation from Packers legend to Jets savior on the NFL’s biggest stage, in its biggest market.

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Bills vs. Jets Odds | Week 1 Monday Night Football

• Spread

  • Jets +1.5

• Moneyline

  • Jets +110

• Dutching

  • N/A (To be added when odds for winning margins are released)

*Bills vs. Jets Odds provided by PointsBet
** All Pigeon Picks bets tracked at Pikkit

Bills vs. Jets Final Score Prediction

• Bills 20, Jets 23

The spread is only 1.5 points, but going to the Jets. With the Jets being predicted to win outright, taking them on both moneyline and against the spread is the play for the Pigeon Picks model in this one.

Remember, Week 1 is the toughest week of the season to predict, especially when it involves new faces in new places. Beware of the risk involved and bet accordingly.

Bills vs. Jets Behavior Prediction

To make this Bills vs. Jets prediction, we had to be considerate of the fact that the Jets offense will look nothing like it did in 2022. In 2022, they started 4 quarterbacks. They were all terrible.

In 2023, they will start Aaron Rodgers in an environment he’s won MVP’s in.

Jets Import Rodgers’ Known Environment

The effort is being made to make Rodgers’ transition from Green Bay as seamless as possible so that the learning curve is diminished.

They’ve added Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb, two familiar weapons from Green Bay. Having Nathaniel Hackett as his offensive coordinator, despite the debacle in Denver, also was not an accident.

In 2021, Hackett was in the same role with the Packers. Aaron Rodgers was in the same role, as was Lazard, as was Cobb. Do you see where we’re going?

That year, 2021, that Packers environment produced Rodgers as MVP and first-team All-Pro Davante Adams, plus they won 13 games and reached the NFC Championship Game. Yet, they were inside the top 10 in exactly zero major offensive categories, sitting right at 10 for some of them (points and total yards). By unit, Green Bay was 18th in rushing yards and ninth in passing yards.

In 2022, when that environment was rattled with the departure of Hackett and Davante Adams, the offense was still at minimum better than anything the 2022 Jets had. Why does that matter?

Quantifying the upgrade

If the Jets had even slightly better quarterback play in 2022, they would have been in the postseason. Meanwhile, in Green Bay, the Rodgers-led Packers were dead smack in the middle of the league in scoring behavior, averaging .73 points per minute of possession time.

That would be two-tenths of a point better than what Zach Wilson did with the Jets combined across his nine starts. Over the course of a game, assuming the Jets possess the ball for around 31 minutes, that’s an extra touchdown every single game.

Let us not forget, however, the 2023 Jets have better offensive weapons overall than the 2022 Packers did with reigning offensive rookie of the year Garrett Wilson and newly signed Dalvin Cook to pair with a returning Breece Hall. This combined with Rodgers familiarity with Cobb and Lazard.

If the Jets had been able to score just one more touchdown every game in 2022, they would have won five more games that they had originally lost.

Using behavioral profiling, including (but not limited to) the 2021 and 2022 Packers, in this Bills vs. Jets prediction, the Jets are projected to score an average of 23.7 points Week 1, across multiple outcomes.

Is The Bills Defense Overrated?

Short answer, yes.

Consider this:

The Bills had a 2022 Score Prevention Behavior Rate (SPBx) of 0.544 points allowed per minute of opponent possession time.

On the surface, that is a great number and among the best in football. However, when we apply behavioral context, we get a truer story.

• Overall, their SPBx Rate was helped by a massive outlier from their 10/9/2022 game against the Steelers.

  • Removing that outlier, their 0.607 SPBx Rate would have ranked them just outside of the top 10.

• They got substantially worse as the season went along, giving up more points at a 24% rate week over week.

• They performed substantially worse following their bye week.

  • Prior to the bye week, the Bills defense had an SPBx Rate of 0.361.

  • Following the bye week, it was 85% worse at 0.667.

In a vacuum, using behavioral profiling of the Bills, in this Bills vs. Jets prediction, they are projected to give up an average of 21.7 points across all outcomes.

Historical Context For Jets Offense Vs. Bills Defense

In November of 2022, the Zach Wilson-led Jets beat the Bills 20-17. They possessed the ball for over 32 minutes. The Bills defense surrendered 20 points to Wilson’s offense.

In 2022, the Rodgers-led Packers had 11 games where they possessed the ball for at least 32 minutes.

They went 8-3 and averaged…23.7 points.

When the Bills and Jets faced off a second time, it was Mike White Leading the charge and the Jets managed only 12 points, despite possessing the ball for over 34 minutes.

Had the Jets had 2022’s Aaron Rodgers, its likely they would have won that game, too.

What About The Bills Offense?

The Jets are typically not the game where we see Josh Allen at his best, and that is a problem for Buffalo.

Their average 0.872 scoring behavior was the third best in the NFL in 2022, including the playoffs. However, they struggled against some of the top tier defenses, and beat up on really bad teams.

• 0.737 SBx against defenses within the top 15 in SPBx (8 games)

That’s a difference of four total points per game off of their season average

• 0.983 SBx against defenses ranked 22 or lower in SPBx (6 games)

That’s a difference of a touchdown per game off of their SBx against top 15 defenses.

On top of that, as the season progressed, their SBx regressed at a 7% rate week over week throughout the season. 7% was tied for the seventh worst regression rate in the NFL for any offense.

In this Bills vs. Jets prediction, the Bills offense is projected to score an average of 21.2 points across all outcomes.

Jets Defense Plays Them Well

If the Bills do in fact score 21 points, it would be more than the 18.5 points they averaged against this defense in 2022. This matchup is one where the environments have largely stayed the same for both teams, and that favors the Jets defense.

The Bills had two of their four worst SBx performances of the season against the Jets. With the Bills poised to potentially regress this year, and the Jets defense continuing to be one of the truly elite units in the league, this could be a favorable matchup for them.

In this Bills vs. Jets prediction, the Jets are projected to surrender an average of 20.5 points across all outcomes.

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