Ignoring what the game state does to a prop

A prop assumes a quantity of minutes, possessions or attempts that the game may not provide. The premise fails long before the player's ability becomes relevant.

Props are priced from expected usage in a normal game. A blowout, an injury elsewhere, foul trouble or a rotation change each alter usage without altering anything about the player.

The correlation cuts both ways and is occasionally in your favour. A quarterback in a game his team is losing badly throws far more than the pre-game projection, which is why chasing situations produce prop overs.

Here is the catch. The game most likely to be a blowout is often the one in which a star's prop looks most likely to hit, so the two failure modes arrive together and feel like bad luck.

What to do with it. Before any prop, ask what game script it needs, and whether the spread and total imply that script or a different one.