NFL Week 4 Preview: Dolphins vs. Bills Odds and Best Bets

Week 4 of the NFL season brings us a playoff rematch, sort of. The Buffalo Bills host the Miami Dolphins for the first time since January’s Wild Card round. But the Dolphins team that will invade Highmark Stadium is far from the one that arrived there eight months ago.

Five seconds: who was the Dolphins’ starting quarterback in that game? 5…4…3…2…1…0.

You will be forgiven if you did not remember the answer is Skylar Thompson. He actually performed admirably, keeping Miami in the game as 14-point underdogs. Some Josh Allen sloppiness helped, as the Dolphins needed only one scoring drive of more than 38 yards to put up 31 points.

Miami this year? Mercy. Literally, Broncos fans were calling for the Mercy rule.

Seventy points; 726 yards. Tua Tagovailoa and company are locked in.

As for the Bills, they have played better football in each successive week. One game and one drive into the season, the Bills were 0-1 and down 7-0. Since then, they have outscored their opponents 75-6.

Iron vs iron this week. Getcha popcorn ready.

Since 2020, the Buffalo Bills have averaged 31.6 points in home games played in September and October. Josh Allen is often at his best earlier in the season, as we saw last year before his elbow injury. When he is right, he routinely makes insane throws like this:

While they are 3-0, the Dolphins have allowed almost 24 points per game, with only the Chargers having what most would consider a top-tier offense.

Josh Allen has played more controlled football, after a downright manic opener against the Jets. He has thrown just one interception in the last two games, and that was on a 3rd and 20 that netted the Bills 41 yards of field position.

Allen has a tendency to be streaky. Right now, he appears to be riding a hot hand. A clear day, at home, against a team that might be feeling itself a little too much, will give the Bills a great chance to light it up.

With that in mind, it makes sense to pair the Bills team over with Josh Allen’s passing yards over. Allen threw for more than 300 yards in all three games against Miami last season, including 352 yards in that aforementioned Wild Card game. The offense is healthy and humming, with Gabe Davis perhaps finally able to emerge as a legitimate #2 target behind Stefon Diggs. Davis has only nine catches, but has scored twice and is 15^th in NextGen Stats’ YAC Over Expectation. When he gets the ball in his hands, he makes plays.

All of this will help Allen have a monster day. He is averaging just over 240 yards per game so far this season. This should help depress his over/under in Week 4 against a team he enjoys success against.

This game opened with an O/U of 54, but is now 53.5 on most books. The Bills and Dolphins broke that number two out of three times last season.

You know what hit all three times? The first half over. This week, the line is set at 26.5, with the books offering various amounts of juice. Their game in week 3 last season ended at only 21-19, but it was tied at 14 at halftime. The teams ran out of gas on a sweltering South Florida afternoon. Only one touchdown was scored in the second half, matching the number of punts that deflected off someone’s rear end.

This game is expected to be played in the 70s (the temperature, if not the score)–ideal conditions for both offenses to thrive, early and often.

Both the Bills and Dolphins are among the head of the class in the AFC, if not the entire NFL. If this game were being played a week later, it may well have been flexed to Sunday night. Then again, that would have taken you-know-who out of prime time. Can’t have that. That would have been…trouble.

While you get ready for Week 4, Sidelines has you covered. Check out our top-five picks for the third week of the NFL season along with prop bets to consider.