Everyone has an opinion about which prop markets run hot or which side sportsbooks quietly like to shade. A full season of real lines and real outcomes settles some of that with numbers instead of instinct.
01Do unders hit more?
Yes — in most markets, noticeably. Volume markets in particular — attempts, completions, receptions — skew toward the under. Passing yards is the one market that ran the other way.
02Which markets swing the hardest?
Ranked by how spiky a player's own numbers are relative to their own season average — the higher the bar, the less a single week tells you.
The pattern is intuitive once it's laid out: QB volume stats are game-plan and clock-driven — a team runs roughly the plays it intends to run. RB and WR yardage and touchdowns depend on hitting a handful of explosive plays each week, so they swing far more from a player's own baseline, game to game. Passing-yardage markets are also among the most heavily bet and closely watched props, which tends to keep them tightly priced; rushing yardage depends on a committee backfield's carry split, which can shift week to week based on matchup and game plan in ways a line can't fully anticipate.
03A quieter league, not a lower-scoring one
A natural question going into the under-tilt: was 2025 just a down year for scoring? The data says no — 2025 scored slightly more per team per game than each of the prior three seasons. What actually dropped was raw volume: teams threw the ball less, completed fewer passes, and ran fewer total plays than they had in 2022, 2023, or 2024.
per team, per game
per team, per game
per team, per game
per team, per game
Passing yardage came down in step with attempts and completions (roughly 225 yards per team per game in 2025 versus 233–236 in the three seasons before it) — so the decline isn't offenses throwing the same number of times more efficiently, it's offenses throwing less overall. Rushing volume held comparatively steady across the same four seasons. Scoring, meanwhile, didn't dip at all — 2025 was the highest-scoring of the four years measured, despite the lighter passing workload.
That gap — fewer plays and fewer completions, same or better scoring — lines up with where the under-tilt was strongest: attempts, completions, and receptions. If prop lines for those markets are still anchored partly to a multi-year historical baseline, a league that's now running a leaner, more efficient offense than its recent past would keep producing unders in those specific markets until the market recalibrates to the new normal. Whether that gap persists, narrows, or snaps back in 2026 is the open question — not one the numbers can answer in advance, but one worth tracking from Week 1 rather than assuming either way.
04What this means going into 2026
- 01QB volume markets are the safest place to have an opinion.
Attempts, completions, yards — least volatile, and priced closest to a coinflip (47–53%) for exactly that reason. There's less randomness for anyone, book or bettor, to be wrong about.
- 02Rushing yards, receiving yards, and passing TDs are where variance lives.
More room for a real mispriced line — but also more room to lose a bet that was right on paper. Size accordingly.
- 03The under-tilt in attempts and completions has a plausible structural cause.
League-wide passing volume was down in 2025 relative to the previous three seasons. If lines lag that shift, the tilt persists until the market catches up — worth checking again a few weeks into 2026.
The market is largely efficient, and last season wasn't a low-scoring one — it was a lower-volume one. The one real, repeatable pattern here is a directional tilt toward unders in volume markets, plausibly tied to that shift. Worth knowing, not worth automating.