Week 12 in the NFL kicks off on Thursday Night Football, when the 8-2 Pittsburgh Steelers head to Cleveland to take on the 2-8 Browns.
The Steelers are fresh off a victory over division rival Baltimore, and they now have a chance to increase their lead in the AFC North.
2024 has been a lost season for the Browns, who entered the season with high hopes after a run to the playoffs last year, but it has been mostly a disaster.
Unsurprisingly, the Steelers are the favorites here, at 3.5 points on the spread, with kickoff set for 8:15 P.M. ET. This article will be providing the best player props for Steelers vs. Browns.
Najee Harris 70+ Rush. Yards (+100) FanDuel
If offense is your thing, this is going to be a tough Thursday Night Football game to get into.
In this game, we have two offenses that are hard to trust, one excellent defense in the Steelers and another good defense in the Browns. Most importantly, this is expected to be a gross weather game.
It is supposed to be cold, rainy and windy in Cleveland on Thursday night. So, you will see some depressed passing markets, but you have to factor in the weather into those numbers.
That said, one area where the Browns defense is much weaker this year than in years past is their run defense. They have the 21st-ranked run defense DVOA, and, due to the fact that they are losing most of their games, they allow a lot of rushing yards in general.
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They have allowed the ninth-most rushing yards per game (134.2) on the sixth-highest yards per carry (4.81) and they are allowing the eighth-most adjusted rushing yards before contact per carry, all via FantasyPoints.
None of these point to the worst run defense in the NFL, of course, but they all show that this is a bottom-10 run defense.
As for Najee Harris, he has historically been a second-half type of running back, but he has been good for most of this season. He has hit 70-plus rushing yards in five of 10 games, and he had exactly 69 rushing yards in one of the games when he came up short.
Of course, he also has hit exactly 70 yards rushing twice, but either way, we can see that his floor is around the 70-yard mark.
The Steelers are a run-heavy team in general, with the third-highest rush rate in the NFL and the fourth-highest neutral rush rate. In a game with bad weather and in which their defense should contain the Browns offense, the guess here is that they are going to be even more run-heavy than normal.
So, you add all that up, and this should be a good game for Harris on the ground.
Najee Harris 70+ rushing yards (+100): 1 Unit
Chris Boswell o6.5 Kicking Points (-135) DK
A kicker prop? That's right, a kicker prop. In a game with an over/under as low as this one (37), sometimes kicker props are the way to go.
As mentioned earlier, this is not the type of game where you should expect fireworks from either offense. For context, this game features a team scoring the second-fewest points per game (Browns at 16.2) against the team allowing the second-fewest points per game (Steelers, at 16.2). Yes, both teams are at exactly 16.2, funny enough.
On the other side of the ball, we have an average Pittsburgh Steelers offense that is 16th in scoring but 22nd in terms of offensive DVOA, with the third-worst red zone offense in the NFL.
While cold, rainy and windy conditions would not be conducive for most kickers, the Steelers getting to the red zone and stalling out there should allow Chris Boswell to have success.
On the season, due to the Steelers' red zone woes on offense, Boswell has gotten to at least seven kicking points in seven of 10 games. Just last week against the Ravens, Boswell kicked an absurd six field goals, which was not even the first time this season he had kicked six FGs.
The seven times this year that he has reached seven kicking points include five games with three or more field goals, which would put him over 6.5 kicking points.
So, in the perfect type of game to root for the kickers, that's exactly what we will be doing on this play.
Chris Boswell over 6.5 kicking points (-135): 1 Unit
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