The Quick Answer
Two Underdog Fantasy plays for the Week 3 Sunday slate, September 27, both in the 1 p.m. ET window and both on the ground: a 42-year-old quarterback whose offensive line keeps making him run for his life, and a running back I am going back to for a second straight week. Both plays lean on something that already happened in Week 2, and the case for each, the video and the current Underdog offer with code OS1 are below.
The first play only needs one scramble. The second needs the Bills to keep doing what they did to Detroit. The two-row card, the Week 2 box-score numbers behind each play and the Keep Your Million rules are below.
The Picks: Week 3 Sunday, September 27
| Player | Stat | Line | Call |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Rodgers (PIT) | Rushing yards | 0.5 | Higher |
| James Cook (BUF) | Rushing yards | 79.5 | Higher |
The top row is a quarterback who had exactly one carry last week, and that one carry already clears the number.
Aaron Rodgers Higher 0.5 Rushing Yards
Seriously, did you watch the Steelers' offensive line in Week 2 against the Patriots? If you did, you saw Rodgers as a sitting duck in a 20-3 loss, sacked four times, with no Michael Pittman Jr. (PIT) in the lineup and DK Metcalf (PIT) turning nine targets into four catches with a drop fest in between. It was ugly, but ugly still produced a single 5-yard scramble, which obviously covers this line. The ESPN box score has him at one carry for 5 yards, and one rush for a yard or more is the whole bet.
While it's not vintage Rodgers back there, it's still a viable spot to deploy him for a yard or more against a Bengals defense that let even brick-footed C.J. Stroud (HOU) find a way above this number last week: Stroud ran three times for 29 yards in Cincinnati's win at Houston. Pittman carries a questionable tag on the Steelers' injury report heading into Sunday, so the protection and target problems that forced Rodgers to move are still on the table. A line this low is a read on whether the pressure shows up again, and everything from Week 2 says it will. The way it loses is the obvious one: sacks do not count as carries, so he has to actually take off once, and a game where Pittsburgh trails again takes the clock-killing kneel-downs off the table too.
For how the sportsbooks price the same yardage, OddsShopper's live odds screen lines up the books on the live NFL rushing yards odds board. The NFL Underdog picks strategy guide covers how to weigh a line this low before you enter a card.
James Cook Higher 79.5 Rushing Yards
The Rodgers play needs one scramble. The Cook play needs a workload, and that part is already on tape. Back to the well with Cook for me for a second straight week after he carved up the Lions for 135 yards on 21 carries, with a touchdown and a 35-yard long, in Buffalo's 41-31 win per the ESPN box score.
The Chargers have been stingy against the run in the early going of 2026, credit where it's due, but I think we can all agree on the disappointment factor with that squad. They are 0-2 after losing at home to the Cardinals and then the Raiders, 26-14 both times, and the books have Buffalo laying a touchdown-sized number at home, which you can shop across every sportsbook on the OddsShopper live odds screen's NFL point spread board. That line says the market expects the Bills to be playing with a lead, and a Buffalo lead means Cook carries. This Bills offensive line sure is something, and Cook's volume is just there in a big way week in, week out regardless of Josh Allen (BUF), who played pretty well against Detroit with three touchdown passes and two more on the ground. Twenty-one carries behind that line in a game the Bills control is the whole case, so 80-plus in a probably positive game script is a click for me all day.
If the grading is new to you, player props betting explained covers how a line like this gets built and settled.
Watch the full breakdown of both plays on the OddsShopper channel:
How Keep Your Million Works
Keep Your Million is Underdog's free-to-play survival game. Every eligible customer, all new users and most existing users, receives a virtual $1,000,000 pot in bonus funds, and the job is to protect it across up to 20 questions.
- Pick a question. Example: will Patrick Mahomes throw for Higher or Lower than 275 passing yards?
- Split your million. Drag a slider to divide the pot between Higher and Lower: 100% on one side, 50/50, or anything in between. All the money has to go somewhere.
- Lock it in. Once you submit before the game starts, it is locked and cannot be changed.
- Keep your winnings. When the game settles, keep whatever you put on the winning side. That amount becomes your pot for the next question.
- Run it back. Make a pick for up to 20 questions. Survive all 20 and cash out whatever is left in Underdog bonus funds. Hit zero and you are out.
The Deposit Match
Underdog Fantasy is also running a first-deposit match. The two state groups here are the match tiers, not the map of where Underdog is available, and the size of the match depends on which tier your state sits in. In the full-product tier (AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT, VA, WV, WI, WY) the match is 50% of your first deposit up to $1,000 in bonus funds. In the predictions-only tier (CT, HI, ID, IA, LA, ME, MT, WA) the match is 25% of your first deposit up to $250 in bonus funds, and Underdog has said that percentage and launch may still change.
New users can sign up with code OS1 and get a 50% first-deposit match up to $1,000 in bonus funds (25% up to $250 in CT, HI, ID, IA, LA, ME, MT and WA).
Use code OS1 and get up to $1,000 in bonus cash
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