Inside the Lines Falcons vs Vikings SGP: Take JJs (McCarthy and Jefferson) and Mason at Fanatics for +643

The Inside the Lines team uses its proven NFL model to identify our best SportsLine player projections versus the best available odds to build our best bets.

By Stephen Oh

& Inside the Lines Team

Sep 12, 2025 at 9:51 am ET • 6 min read

Inside the Lines team

The SportsLine Projection Model was developed and powered by the Inside the Lines team. You can visit SportsLine for our model's main market bets (spread, total, money line) but if you are looking for ALL our personal best bets for free, check out our recently launched Inside the Lines blog. These are just a fraction of our best bets, which are all free on our new blog. We will be providing our team's personal best bets for every NFL game during the 2025 season, with this post looking at Sunday Night Football between the Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings.

Main Markets

The lookahead line favored Minnesota by -5.5. Despite the Falcons losing (and not covering) versus Tampa Bay at home and Minnesota executing a great comeback on the road against Chicago, the line has moved to the Falcons at +3.5.

The model strongly favors Minnesota, giving the Vikings a 66% chance to cover by an average margin of 10 points. Thursday Night Football's Washington at Green Bay game had a very similar dynamic where the steam moved the line to as little as Washington +3, but the model had the Packers by 10 and they won by nine.

The best spread bet as of Friday morning is Minnesota -3 (-120), but I think given the line value it's OK to take Minnesota -3.5 and pay a much lower price (-104 to -105) that is available at any number of books.

J.J. McCarthy Over 1.5 passing touchdowns (+115 BetMGM, +100 Fanatics)

Our projected score for Atlanta is just over 19 points, which isn't that far off from the 20.5 the odds imply, so most of the spread value on Minnesota is coming from the Vikings greatly exceeding the 24 team total. The driving force for these points is McCarthy averaging nearly two passing touchdowns per simulation.

While we were all over McCarthy's Under 31.5 pass attempts in Week 1, we and the oddsmakers now have him at 29.5, which is way more than the 20 he had in Week 1. He had two passing touchdowns on just 20 attempts, and he had a similar high TD rate on tough throws on relatively few attempts at Michigan. He is not Allen Iverson or James Harden, who score 30 points on 30 attempts. He's more Adrian Dantley (look him up those of you're under 50).

McCarthy is 1-0 in his career for Over 1.5 passing TDs, and Sam Darnold went Over this line in 12 of 17 games in the regular season last year, and I think Darnold's performance in this system is the more accurate predictor of McCarthy's performance than his individual pass attempt times pass completions times rookie TD rate standard odds formula would use.

Jordan Mason Over 12.5 rush attempts (-130 Fanatics)

You can find lines as high as 14.5 with significant plus money on the Over, and most have it at 13.5 with even money on the Over. I'll go ahead and pay the extra 30 money units for the one fewer rush attempt.

Mason's rushing popped off the screen on MNF, especially compared to last year's starter Aaron Jones. Jones looked OK as a receiver and better in the second half as a runner once McCarthy established himself as an NFL QB who can actually pass. Mason won't become a true RB1, but I would consider him to be the lead rusher when healthy. Jones' rush attempt line is a juiced Under 9.5 attempts.

Mason not only had 15 carries in Week 1, he was 8-5 Over this line as the RB1a in San Francisco with Christian McCaffrey on the shelf most of last season. While I like his attempts more, there is value on Mason's Over in rushing yards as well since we project him to rush for about 70 yards.

Justin Jefferson anytime touchdown (+110 Fanatics)

When he's back from suspension, I guarantee the better ATD value will be Jordan Addison, but with Addison out and Adam Thielen still not fully integrated into this version of the Vikings' offense, it leaves Jefferson as the primary target and driver of our J.J. McCarthy passing TD Over bet. The +110 implies 47.6% probability, and our 0.65 TDs per sim implies around a 57% chance of Jefferson finding the end zone.

Jefferson accounts for 29% of Minnesota's receiving TDs when he plays. That already high figure would be even higher if Addison wasn't accounting for nearly 32% when he plays. If Jefferson gets a +10 percentage point bump (one-third of Addison's TD share) he is nearly 40% this week. And even if McCarthy throws just one TD, Jefferson could hit this.

The three player props parlayed at Fanatics pays off at +643. If you toss in the Falcons spread (-105 Fanatics), you build up to +1351.

Prop Cheat Sheet for the Game

I hand selected my favorite props from the table below which shows all of our model values vs the best lines and/or prices. The model projected stat (average of simulations) is in [brackets], a player's cover record vs that bet since the start of last season including playoff games and the current season cover record is also displayed. If you don't like what you see above then I won't be offended. Maybe one of these is more to your liking.

What makes a bet an "Inside the Lines Best Bet?"

These are ones where:

1) Best Projection: Our SportsLine Model's projection shows clear value versus the line and we love certain statistical trends, X's and O's and subjective supporting data that supports our side but isn't directly factored into the model. For example, say we love a running back to go Over 14.5 carries and his backup is projected for 5.5 carries, but the backup is questionable and there's a chance he can be ruled out, which surely will change our projection to 16.5 (third-stringer gets 3.5) and the line would likely go from 12.5 to 15.5. If we have value on a side and the only unknown factors that will change are in our favor, we'll consider it our "Best Projection."

AND

2) Best Price: There is an outlier best price that we should take advantage of before it steams in "our direction." In most of these cases, the best-priced book is using "standard odds making logic" to set the line, but our team has identified a unique situation where standard odds rules don't apply. For example, maybe a player is -110 to throw an interception, but in his last three seasons he has averaged just 0.4 interceptions on the road compared to 0.7 at home because the team plays on a fast track at home and averages 5+ more pass attempts at home.

Step 1 provides greater accuracy and Step 2, especially when combined with a nice Profit Boost or Promotion, significantly lowers the bar for being profitable ... which is why we like to feature our best line sportsbooks offers.