Updated Sep 7, 2026 · Week 1 board.
The Week 1 number: Lions -7
New Orleans plays at Detroit at 1 p.m. ET on Sep 13. All three of our books have Detroit a 7-point home favorite: Pinnacle, DraftKings, Bovada. The total isn't the same everywhere.
Pinnacle 50.5, Bovada 50, DraftKings 49.5, a 1-point disagreement about scoring while the side number never budges. Detroit's moneyline runs from −305 at DraftKings to −350 at Bovada, with New Orleans between +245 and +275 depending where you look.
What our own pick engine published on this game
Our published number on this spread was captured Aug 21 at 1:31 p.m. ET. It reads: line 7, away side, our number 6.26, edge −0.74, confidence (our own stated chance the pick is right) 0.598, and a recommended stake of 3.9% of bankroll at −110. In plain words, our estimate of 6.26 sits under the market's 7.
The edge is small. Small enough that the stake lands well under our 5% ceiling. On the total, the same source takes the under at 49.5. Our number is 46.56, edge −2.94, confidence 0.674, stake capped at the full 5%.
Then the moneyline. Our own number gives Detroit a 67% win chance against a market implying 75% to 78% at prices of −305 to −350. That's an edge of 0.17 by our own arithmetic. And the recommended stake on that same pick prints zero, with nothing anywhere explaining why.
I'm reporting it as it stands instead of inventing a reason, and nothing on this page has been graded yet.
Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Goff by our own numbers
Twelve Lions carry a Week 1 number. Five of them carry one over ten points, and below Sam LaPorta's 10.95 the next Detroit figure on the board is Jacob Saylors at 4.89, a drop of 6.06. Those five are the table, and for once the expensive ones are the right ones.
| Player | Team | Pos | Projected pts (PPR) | Board rank | ADP | Auction $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jahmyr Gibbs | DET | RB | 22.50 | RB1 | 1.4 | $65 |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | DET | WR | 18.83 | WR4 | 6.9 | $55 |
| Jared Goff | DET | QB | 15.79 | QB17 | 103.1 | $5 |
| Jameson Williams | DET | WR | 12.13 | WR27 | 45.4 | $19 |
| Sam LaPorta | DET | TE | 10.95 | TE6 | 103.0 | $4 |
Gibbs goes first in the room and the board also puts him at the head of the position, 22.50 points. St. Brown goes seventh and comes back fourth among receivers. Nobody is getting robbed in the expensive half of this offense, which is not what I expected to write when I opened the file.
The money is at tight end. LaPorta costs $4 and lands sixth at his position at 10.95, while the room drafts him 103rd. Thirty-seven cents per projected point. Cheaper points exist further down the auction sheet, on dollar names nobody starts, but not attached to a top-six tight end.
Jameson Williams runs the other way. He goes 45th and comes back twenty-seventh among receivers, which is a real gap and the one Detroit pick I'd let somebody else make.
Where this pull runs out
Two gaps I'd rather state than paper over. First, David Montgomery was listed as a Lion here until today. He is listed in Houston on the current board, so he is out of the table entirely rather than corrected in place, and his roster tie belongs to the NFL's own Detroit Lions roster page and not to us. Second, past that one-word tag we pulled no injury report, no practice participation, no snap counts and no offensive-line information this week.
A team hub promising camp notes or a health picture would be promising you something I can't hand over. What I can back with a real number is the Week 1 line, our published edge on it, and the distance between what the draft market and the board each think this offense is worth.
The Receipts Drawer
The number: 37 cents. Sam LaPorta, $4 against a 10.95 projection, sixth at his position, drafted 103rd. That is the Detroit pick worth making tonight, Questionable tag and all, and the price is not going to survive one good Sunday. Where this breaks: Detroit spreads the ball the way it did last September, LaPorta lands nearer eleventh than sixth, and the four dollars bought you a streamer.
Watch his first-half target count against New Orleans. On the game itself, our edge on the spread is thin, well under a point, so shop the number instead of hammering it, and leave the moneyline alone until somebody explains a 0.17 edge sitting beside a zero stake. The full 16-game Week 1 board, all three books, lives at /odds. Every Week 1 pick we publish sits at /picks/nfl: spreads, totals, moneylines.
The Week 1 fantasy numbers behind the table above are at /fantasy/nfl/rankings, and player-level prop lines for Sunday are at /player-props?sport=nfl. Two divisional sibling hubs run the same numbers and the same standard: Green Bay's hub and Houston's hub, both published the same week as this one.
