The 2024 NFL season is underway and you can still get into the player awards markets. NFL MVP is the most popular of the player awards, but you may want to take a crack at the NFL Offensive Player of the Year. It can be a difficult market to bet, especially early in a season.
It’s a market where you need a few games under the belt in order to effectively assess what could become the type of season worthy of an NFL OPOY. We are going to see that typically the OPOY needs to have a statistical outlier of a season. So, what we can do is build a historical profile and then use it to predict our Offensive Player of the Year at some point during the season. Hopefully, that point gives us favorable odds to cash us a huge winner at the end of the 2024 season.
Building the Profile
The NFL Offensive Player of the Year doesn’t have just a good season. He puts up numbers that are absolutely ridiculous. As mentioned, the OPOY usually has a season that is an outlier among others. We can take last year’s winner, RB Christian McCaffrey, as an example.
McCaffrey ran for 1,459 yards and caught 67 passes for 564 more. He ended the season with 2,023 yards from scrimmage and 21 total touchdowns. Add in 420 more yards and 5 more TDs during the postseason and McCaffrey was simply outstanding.
The average production for an Offensive Player of the Year by position over the past decade is as follows:
- QB: 4,600 passing yards and 44 TDs
- RB: 2,125 total yards and 17.5 TDs
- WR: 1,800 receiving yards, 140 receptions and 11 TDs
Think about it. A quarterback that wins this award needs to pass for over 270 yards and three touchdowns a game and that’s if he plays all 17 games in the regular season. Running backs and wide receivers need to put up over 100 yards a game and that isn’t easy to do. Plus, most of the past decade’s numbers came when the regular season was just 16 games. That 4,600 yards for a quarterback is going to be closer to 5,000 very soon.
Consider the MVP
Football sells tickets because teams score. Fans like scoring and teams need great quarterbacks and skill players to score more points. The rules favor offenses and typically the league’s MVP is an offensive player. More often than not, that player is a quarterback.
When considering the Offensive Player of the Year award, do not consider it to be a consolation prize. There were a few years where Drew Brees didn’t win the league MVP, but won the OPOY and many viewed the award as one given to a player that was good but not good enough to be the MVP. That’s not the case.
Five of the last 12 OPOYs won the NFL MVP award in the same season. All four of the quarterbacks that won the OPOY over the last 12 seasons were also the MVP that year (Peyton Manning, Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, and Patrick Mahomes). RB Adrian Peterson won both awards in 2012.
What is interesting is that bettors will get far better prices on the OPOY than on the MVP. For example, Mahomes is the betting favorite to win this year’s MVP. You can find his odds around +450 to +500. However, his 2024 OPOY odds are sitting at +5000! (Bet now at BetUS)
Pick Winners
We all love to pick winners, right? When you are analyzing your candidates for the NFL OPOY, take into account that these guys come from teams that win a lot of games. This award is one that is statistics-based, but wins also matter.
McCaffrey’s 49ers played in the Super Bowl last season after they went 12-5 and earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. In 2022, Justin Jefferson won the OPOY with 128 catches and 1,809 yards receiving. Both numbers led the NFL and Minnesota went 13-4, won the NFC North and earned the No. 3 seed in the NFC playoffs.
Over the past decade, every single OPOY played on a team that won at least 10 games. All but one won 11. The average number of wins was 12. While OPOY is based on stats, remember that the winner will likely come from a team that probably wins its division and, at the very least, makes the playoffs.
WRs Taking Over
The OPOY award was a running back award for a long time. From 1996 to 2003, every OPOY winner was a running back. Then, the tide started to change. Between 2007 and 2016, the OPOY shifted toward the quarterback. Quarterbacks won seven of the 10 awards in that time frame.
Jerry Rice was the OPOY in 1993. No wide receiver won the award again until 2019 when New Orleans WR Michael Thomas won it. Over the last five seasons, we have had three wide receivers claim the award – Jefferson in 2022, Cooper Kupp in ‘21, and Thomas in ‘19.
No Repeat Winners
Marshall Faulk won the NFL OPOY in three straight seasons – 1999, 2000, and 2001. Since then, no player has ever repeated as a winner of the award. It’s been one and done for everyone.
McCaffrey is among the favorites to win the OPOY this year at +800, but he’s not the overall favorite. That honor belongs to Miami’s Tyreek Hill (+700).
Betting the 2024 NFL OPOY
Now, you have a profile for the perfect NFL OPOY candidate this year. It’s a player with some pretty crazy stats, who might be an MVP candidate, plays for a winning team, and is not named Christian McCaffrey. Looking at trends, the player is more likely to be a wide receiver.
That helps us narrow the field some. It’s also why betting Hill before he’s even played a game yet might make sense. In 2022, Hill had 119 catches for 1,710 yards. He finished fourth in the OPOY voting. Last year, he caught another 119 passes and led the NFL with 1,799 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns. His production faded over the final month of the season though as his quarterback, Tua Tagovailo, was injured.
Miami won 11 games last year and could win the AFC East this season. Head coach Mike McDaniel dials up some great stuff on offense and you can bet Hill will get plenty of opportunities to showcase his talents. You may also choose to wait and see how guys like Dallas WR CeeDee Lamb (+1000 at BetOnline) and Jefferson (+1200) do the first few weeks of the season.
