By Will Hill
FOX Sports Betting Analyst
Many of the NFL awards given out every February can be confusing and open to interpretation when it comes to the criteria (I’m looking at you, Comeback Player of the Year). However, MVP is not one of those.
Running back Adrian Peterson won the award in 2012 after nearly breaking the all-time rushing record for a single season. In the 11 years since, it’s been all quarterbacks.
Further simplifying things, all of those 11 quarterbacks have been on teams that are either No. 1 or 2 seeds (and division winners).
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Go all the way back to 2007, the year after LaDanian Tomlinson won the honors, and all but one MVP winner was a quarterback and on a team that was a top-two seed.
Along with Peterson, Peyton Manning in 2008 was the only exception, as he won the award on a Colts team that was a No. 5 seed at 12-4.
You get the idea: This award almost always goes to the quarterback of one of the best teams in the league.
Fast-forward to this upcoming season. If you look at the NFC, the 49ers Over/Under for season wins is a shade higher than 11. The Eagles, Cowboys and Lions are all slightly under that number. Overall, the Lions are projected to be an elite team.
However, the quarterbacks for the other three teams have MVP odds of 14-1, 16-1 and 20-1, respectively.
Lions quarterback Jared Goff is listed at 35-1 — nearly double the payout of the other contenders.
This number seems mispriced, especially considering we know the criteria of what constitutes an MVP in the modern era. Remember, it’s the quarterback of one of the best teams in football.
Goff’s Lions won the division last year. They also held a 17-point, second-half lead in last year’s NFC title game in San Francisco before losing 35-32 in a heartbreaker.
If it weren’t for a couple of key drops and a fumble, Goff would have been headed to his second Super Bowl.
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The narrative on Goff has changed.
At first, he was a bust. Then he was viewed by many as merely a product of Sean Mcvay’s system. Now, I think the consensus is that Goff is just a solid football player. Since joining the Lions, he has 79 touchdowns, with just 27 interceptions. And he’s thrown for over 12,000 yards in three seasons.
Patrick Mahomes won this award in 2018 at a ridiculous preseason price of 75-1 as a first-year starter. The next year, Lamar Jackson won it at around a similar long-shot number of 70-1. Even in 2020, a resurgent Aaron Rodgers was a 30-1 winner.
With betting becoming more popular, those astronomical payouts are simply not available for players who have any chance to win.
Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and C.J. Stroud are all 10-1 or shorter, for example.
But if you’re looking for someone further down the board, Goff at 35-1 is the best combination of long odds with a realistic chance to win.
PICK: Jared Goff to win MVP (+3500)
Will Hill, a contributor on the Bears Bets Podcast, has been betting on sports for over a decade. He is a betting analyst who has been a host on VSiN, as well as the Goldboys Network.
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