The market opened this one modestly — Buffalo a field-goal favorite, the total sitting in the low 50s. It hasn't stayed there. Buffalo's spread has climbed to 5.5, the total is up to 54.5 — the highest number on this week's board, 9.2 points above the league's own scoring average — and Buffalo's moneyline has shortened from -162 to -238.

Both teams arrive 1-0, and both are working on a short week — five days removed from their openers, which usually means limited practice time to fix anything that looked shaky. Buffalo didn't look shaky: Josh Allen posted 14.5 passing EPA in the win over Houston, the stronger of the two Thursday quarterbacks by a wide margin, with Jared Goff a more modest 5.85 EPA in Detroit's win over New Orleans. That gap is doing most of the work in the number's climb.

Detroit brings the other complication. Comerica Park is a dome, and Thursday is the Lions' first game outdoors this season, on Highmark's turf in front of a crowd that's noisy for a reason. None of that is a pick — it's the shape of a market that opened this game competitive and has spent all week deciding it isn't.

Jahmyr Gibbs is the whole engine of Detroit's offense right now. In the opener against New Orleans he carried 30 times for 156 yards and added 5 catches for 30 more — 186 yards from scrimmage on 35 total touches, the clearest workhorse number the league produced in Week 1.

Buffalo's defense has already faced one heavy running game this season — Houston put up 124 yards on the ground in the opener, a middling number that didn't alarm anyone in either direction. Gibbs is a different problem: he's as much a receiving threat as a rusher, which means Buffalo's answer has to come from its linebackers in coverage, not just its front seven at the line of scrimmage.

Detroit is going to lean on him again. A short week limits how much a defense can retool its gameplan between Sunday and Thursday, and the Lions have shown no interest in making Gibbs anything other than the focal point.

Dalton Kincaid caught all 6 of his targets for 130 yards in Buffalo's opener — 21.7 yards every time Josh Allen looked his way, the most efficient big game any tight end put up in the league's first week.

That kind of per-target number usually means a defense left a linebacker or safety on an island against him more than once, and it's the matchup type Detroit's defense — also adjusting to its first true road trip of the year — has five days to find a plan for.

It's not the kind of number that repeats every week. It is the kind that makes Buffalo's passing game harder to key on than just Allen or its receivers — one more reason the market's total keeps climbing.