Quarter season awards market bets
10 bets, including some fun longshots
Earlier this week, Dalton took two MVP bets in the Stealing Lines Discord, which were a little bit on the longer-shot side but I really liked the logic behind. It got my wheels turning a bit on these markets.
I feel pretty strongly the first quarter of the season has been pretty wild this year, in terms of what will ultimately be the storylines of the year. Obviously some of it will keep up, but when we also know the December games play an outsized role in determining the winners of some of these awards, this feels like a great time to be thinking outside the box.
Today, I want to look at the MVP and Offensive Player of the Year markets. The favorites for MVP right now are Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Dalton made a good case that it’s pretty wide open, and one of the subs in the Discord asked about cashing out a preseason Mahomes ticket at 1.66x the initial risk. In most cases, letting it ride is the significant preference, but I thought this was a sharp note.
Mahomes is the favorite largely because the Chiefs are 4-0 and he’s Mahomes, but for as much as I’ve been a huge Chiefs guy with seasonal stuff and weekly picks basically since the start of Stealing Lines — at times being too bullish on them, but typically finding profitability there — I have to say that Mahomes is not paying his best ball. I still think he’s the best QB in the league, but there’s a thing here where every defensive coordinator gives the Chiefs his best gameplan, and Mahomes is tasked with more than any QB in the league. And that alone does make him a deserving favorite for the award, but it’s not enough for him to win it, since we know he’s graded on a bit of a curve at this point. Happens to all the greats.
The Chiefs didn’t just lose Rashee Rice this week. They had already lost Hollywood Brown, and it was clear this offseason they decided that 2023 wasn’t the right approach. In 2023, they tested the bounds of how great Mahomes was by more or less punting all the skill positions and putting it on Mahomes to carry everyone. He struggled at times in the regular season, but elevated in the playoffs and they still won the Super Bowl. But their approach this offseason was clear — they admitted that was taking it too far, when teams are throwing so much at them schematically, and they needed players that could actually win on routes. And with Travis Kelce aging, they needed to acquire some players.
I wasn’t really in on Brown for fantasy football, but he was one of the more intriguing players to this whole operation, because while he’s not a superstar, he provided depth and stability if the upside players in Rice and Xavier Worthy weren’t immediate hits. Losing him — and then Rice — meant we’re already in a spot where Justin Watson ran a ton of routes last week, and Watson isn’t great but he’s at least not JuJu Smith-Schuster and Skyy Moore. These guys, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and Mecole Hardman, and Kadarius Toney’s unreliability, have literally been replacement-level players, and it puts a ton of stress on Mahomes in a way that makes his play look worse.
I’m still pumped we got the over 11.5 wins on the seasonal market, because at 4-0, all they need to do is go 8-5 the rest of the way to hit that. But Mahomes came into this year with a different approach, and now he’s in a tough spot. I do think this offense is going to rely on Kelce more in the immediate future, and still think Worthy can be a dynamic player alongside that. That duo might be enough. But what Mahomes is faced with right now is a little like what Garrett Wilson went through last year, where he thought he’d have a huge QB upgrade in Aaron Rodgers, and prepared for that all offseason, and then realized he was back playing with Zach Wilson all year. Mahomes and Andy Reid were prepared to build more of the offense around players being able to win against certain looks, and now they have to go back to the 2023 nonsense, and I think it’s even tougher when you weren’t preparing for that all offseason but are unexpectedly thrown into this mode. It’s more like survival than an expectation of thriving.
They may still wind up with the 1 seed when it’s all said and done, but I loved Dalton’s two longshot bets on NFC teams that could take the 1 seed on that side, because I think this is a year where if the Chiefs do win the AFC, the QB of the NFC’s 1 seed could very well take down the award. Voters want storylines, and while there’s an argument Mahomes overcoming injuries might still be worthy of the award you have to think other players are going to elevate and look like great options, as well. And there are already murmurs that Mahomes is actually not playing very well, so I do absolutely think he’s overvalued. Or, put differently, it’s a little hard to believe he’s only +300 in a year where the Chiefs started 4-0, but I think that’s reflecting that he’s not actually a great candidate right now, but needs to be up there as a default. I think once the Chiefs lose a couple games, which I do think will happen, his odds are going to slide. There might even be a chance to get back in on him later on, after some other names have elevated to favorite status, if the Chiefs give up a couple of games and are something like 7-3 after they play in Buffalo in Week 11.
Obviously there are other ways this could go, including Mahomes just reminding me and everyone why he’s in contention to be the greatest player to ever play this sport. But in terms of the ask in Discord about cashing out that future, while the response is almost always that’s it’s +EV to just let it ride, this was a case where I saw the reasoning, in that I’d want to be actively betting against the current Mahomes price and don’t believe the initial bet has improved enough to actually be worth a 67% profit. I think that’s a nice number to be offered given the injuries, and you’re basically getting to cash in on them winning four one-score games so far — they beat the Ravens when Isaiah Likely’s foot barely touched the line, the Bengals by 1 with a last-second field goal, the Falcons by 5 after a turnover on downs at the 13-yard line with under a minute left, and the Chargers by 7 in a low-scoring game with a fourth-quarter TD to break the tie and hold on. If they lose any of those games, and especially if they lose a couple, you’re not getting this price, and really nowhere near it.
I still think Josh Allen is a really solid candidate near the top of the MVP race, but again, I really agree with Dalton’s take that there is value in some longer shots right now.
As for the Offensive Player of the Year market, that’s a little easier to explain. The two favorites right now are Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry. Either could obviously win, and they both look great, but we’re talking about two players getting by on rushing efficiency — one of the stats I’d most want to fade in a quarter-season sample — and where both are getting up there in age (Saquon is 27, Henry 30). Again, they deserve to be the favorites, but I think this is a market even more ripe for picking out some favorites in right now, because betting against older RBs thriving on rushing efficiency is sort of my whole thing over in the fantasy space.
Let’s get to some picks.
Brock Purdy, MVP
+1500 at BetMGM
Purdy fits with Dalton’s other picks as an NFC QB. Right now, Sam Darnold has the best odds among NFC QBs, but his coach is more likely to win Coach of the Year than he is to win MVP, in my opinion.
He’s there because the Vikings are 4-0, and Purdy is down a little bit because the 49ers are 2-2. But the 49ers are obviously good enough to still contend for the No. 1 seed, and the two keys here are first that Purdy is being asked to do a lot more this year (and it’s being covered already), and that he was overlooked last year in part for the exact opposite reason — that he was thought to be something of a product of the system. This creates an obvious path for support to build even stronger this year, where you could see an overcorrection and I think if he and Mahomes wound up as the two No. 1 seeds, Mahomes would be judged harshly and Purdy favorably.
Risk 0.5u to win 7.5u