What is the implied probability the New York Jets beat the Buffalo Bills?

On Sunday, the New York Jets will face the Buffalo Bills in the second of their two in-division matchups this season. Earlier in the year, the New York Jets upset the Buffalo Bills in a 22-16 opening weekend game that many presumed to be over after quarterback Aaron Rodgers went down with an injury on just the fourth snap of the game.

Since that week 1 upset, the Jets have gone 3-5 while the Bills have gone 5-4. Each team is woefully failing to reach their preseason expectations. Due to this underachieving, this game now has huge implications for whether either team will make the playoffs at all, with a Jets loss setting the Jets’ playoff odds at around 4% while a Bills loss would set the Bills’ playoffs odds around 9% per the New York Times. As implied by those odds, this is a game that neither team can afford to lose.

So what are the odds the Jets pull the win out? Well, the Jets enter the game as a rather significant underdog per DraftKings Sportsbook, with a spread of +7.5 as of midnight on game day. In terms of the money line, the Jets sit at +280, which means you can bet $100 on the Jets to win the game outright to win $280. When converting that to an implied probability, this means DraftKings thinks the Jets have about a 26% chance of beating the Bills.

While lower than one would hope, by no means is 26% a trivial probability. In fact, that essentially means DraftKings thinks the Jets would win in 26 of 100 iterations of this game being played. For Jets fans, we just have to hope that this Sunday is one of the 26. Let’s go Jets.