NFL MVP Betting Odds: Daniel Jones Is a Better Candidate Than You Realize

The NFL is a serious business. Day in and day out, players and coaches work their hardest to reach their ultimate potential and bring the Lombardi Trophy home to their cities.

But sometimes, it’s fun to root for funny outcomes. And Daniel Jones winning an AP NFL MVP award would be a funny outcome.

The FanDuel Sportsbook has Jones’ NFL MVP betting odds at +7500 to do just that in 2023. He’s quite a longshot, ranking as the 24th-most likely player in the league to win this year.

“Danny Dimes” has received his fair share of flack since entering the league. Considered a controversial first-round pick by some during the 2019 NFL Draft due to his frankly average play at Duke University, Jones enjoyed a strong rookie year taking over for incumbent starter Eli Manning. Unfortunately for Jones and his New York Giants, things went pretty south over his next couple of seasons.

The Joe Judge, Jason Garrett Era

The Giants fired then-coach Pat Shurmur after Jones’ rookie season, installing former New England Patriots special teams coordinator Joe Judge as his replacement. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now say with confidence that Judge was not a good hire.

In his second and third seasons as the Giants’ starting quarterback, Jones spent his dropbacks primarily throwing to a tight end the team didn’t like, wide receivers the team regretted bringing in, and a bunch of running backs.

We’re only slightly exaggerating here. Fans grew so frustrated with former first-round pick Evan Engram that they put together YouTube “highlight videos” of his blunders while with the team.

The team seemed to resent Darius Slayton, a former fifth-round pick, for leading the team in receiving yards in three of his four NFL seasons, requiring him to take a pay cut to remain with the team heading into 2022. 2021 first-round pick Kadarius Toney caused headaches for the Giants while barely seeing the field. And the massive contract the team doled out for Kenny Golladay in 2020 has since played out as one of the worst free agent deals in recent years.

Things were dire enough that in 2021, Saquon Barkley (41) and fellow running back Devontae Booker (40) finished second and third, respectively, on the team in total receptions.

The combination of Joe Judge and Jason Garrett steering the team’s offense ended quite poorly, but the decisions made up top by then-general manager Dave Gettleman might have been even more costly.

Gettleman’s habit of massively over-spending on middling free agents dug the team into a substantial hole with regard to their cap, and his repeated whiffs in the NFL drafts led to a roster bereft of talent with no means of adding help via free agency.

Jones looked about as good as you could expect him to look given those circumstances – which wasn't great. He emerged from his first three seasons carrying a burdensome 12-25 record. He led the league in fumbles in his 13 games as a rookie, and his propensity for taking sacks behind a lackluster Giants offensive line padded the stat sheets of opposing pass-rushers in each of his first four seasons.

As bad as things have seemed, the Giants have stuck with Jones through all of his trials and tribulations. With the team headed in a positive direction for the first time in several years, their investment in their QB1 could pay massive dividends in 2023.

Building Something Out of Nothing

Jones weathered the storm of the past few years and stands to benefit greatly from his organization’s positive recent growth. 2022 was the first season of a new era for the Giants, one with former Buffalo Bills standouts Joe Shoen and Brian Daboll running the show.

The team’s 2022 draft immediately yielded a handful of impact players for what felt like the first time in years. They had little financial flexibility while working themselves out from underneath the burdensome situation Gettleman created, and yet somehow the Giants engineered one of the most unlikely playoff seasons in recent memory with their first winning record of Jones’ career.

Daboll helped Jones produce a career-best season in spite of all of the roster’s shortcomings. Jones finished the year with a career-high 67.2% completion rate, the most passing yards of his career (3,205), his most passing touchdowns since his rookie year (15), and an extremely impressive 1.1% interception rate – the best mark in the NFL last season.

Fantasy football managers will already be well aware of this next bit. Jones finished the year with the fifth-most rushing yards among quarterbacks. He had made use of his plus-athleticism at points in his previous three seasons, but Daboll helped develop Jones into a legitimate rushing threat. He capped off his career-best passing season with 708 yards and 7 more touchdowns on 120 attempts as a rusher.

These feats become even more impressive once we add in some context about the team’s 2022 campaign.

The Giants entered the season with Sterling Shepard as their projected top wideout. Shepard has always been a productive player when healthy but has been plagued by injuries over the last several seasons. He was only able to suit up for three games last season before suffering a season-ending knee injury.

Second-round pick Wan'Dale Robinson appeared to be establishing himself as a reliable option for Jones until a knee injury ended his season, as well. Even rookie tight end Daniel Bellinger made some noise for the team before suffering a freakish eye and face injury. The team’s already-thin receiver depth chart took several hits from injuries, and yet they still found ways to keep the offense moving.

The aforementioned Slayton played a big role yet again for the Giants’ offense, and the team also unearthed a hidden gem in former Bills draft pick Isaiah Hodgins toward the end of the year. Hodgins became an every-down player for the team from Week 13 on and helped them overcome the Minnesota Vikings in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs with 8 catches for 105 yards and a touchdown. The team even helped former San Francisco 49ers special teams ace Richie James turn in a productive season as their primary slot receiver.

The best is hopefully yet in store for the Giants. The team added pass-catching tight end Darren Waller to their offense during the offseason and added Biletnikoff award-winner Jalin Hyatt in the draft. This Giants roster doesn’t seem to have any Odell Beckham-caliber pass-catchers in their midsts, but Jones’ pass-catching group for the upcoming season projects as the best one yet in his career.

A Look Under the Hood

Jones’ 2022 season might appear like a lone positive blip on an otherwise negative trajectory, but the young quarterback had been showing low-key signs of improvement even during the failed tenures of Judge, Garrett, and Gettleman.

We mentioned Jones’ league-best interception rate from last season. It might seem like a bit of fluke given Jones’ reputation, but that number didn’t quite appear out of nowhere. His interception rates have steadily declined in each season since his rookie year (2.6%), indicating that the former turnover-prone quarterback has improved.

His tendency to fumble has followed a similar trend. A year after coughing up a league-high 19 fumbles as a rookie, Jones had 10 fumbles in 2020, followed by 7 in 2021, and finally just 6 this past season.

While his percentage of negative plays has steadily declined with each passing year, Jones’ touchdown rate has begun to bounce back. His rookie season 5.2% touchdown rate remains the best of his career, but he has performed incrementally better in each season since then. While his touchdown rate fell to a lowly 2.5% mark in 2020, that rate climbed to 2.8% in 2021 and 3.2% in 2022.

Given the team’s lack of receiving options during his tenure with the team, it stands to reason that Jones’ touchdown rate could take yet another step forward in 2023 with the additions of Waller and Hyatt, the latter of which led college football with 15 receiving touchdowns in 2022.

Jones’ quiet but steady improvements over the past few seasons haven’t resulted in flashy numbers yet, but his overall production could vault to another level in 2023 given the positive environment team leaders Schoen and Daboll have fostered through their first years with the team.

AP voters seem to value two things above all else when considering MVP candidates: division-winning records and avoiding negative plays. Virtually every MVP winner in recent history has helped their team to the top of their divisions, and very few did so while committing even an average number of turnovers.

The Giants were already a playoff-caliber team last season – surprising as that was – and Jones protected the ball with the best of them along the way. It isn’t that far-fetched to think it’s possible that the Giants can win their tough division if Jones’ offensive production takes another step forward.

Conclusion

The Giants were not a well-run football team in Jones’ first few seasons, but he still managed to show underrated growth in multiple key aspects of the game while playing on those struggling teams. The organization as a whole is on the upswing, and a rising tide lifts all ships.

Jones is a sleeper candidate for a breakout 2023 campaign and already has some of the underlying skills that the Associated Press’ voters look for when making their MVP ballots.

He's considered a longshot with his +7500 NFL MVP betting odds, but he’s already closer than people may realize to an MVP-level performance.

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author’s advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.