NFL MVP Betting: Will Joe Burrow Win His First MVP in 2023?

According to the NFL MVP odds at FanDuel Sportsbook, there are three front-runners to the win the MVP award in 2023: Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, Kansas City Chiefs signal-caller Patrick Mahomes, and Cincinnati Bengals frontman Joe Burrow. Each of them have +700 odds to win the MVP for this coming season.

Burrow’s Bengals have gotten better with each year since the team drafted him in 2020. His rookie season, which ended prematurely due to injury, saw the Bengals finish 2-7-1 in games with Burrow under center. The following season, the team bounced back to a strong 10-7 record, which they leveraged into a Super Bowl appearance. And in 2022, the Bengals won the AFC North with a 12-4 mark and made another AFC title game appearance.

Burrow has helped turn around a franchise that had finished third or fourth in the AFC North in four straight seasons prior to his arrival. He’s taken them from bottomfeeders to perennial Super Bowl contenders.

That has put Burrow among the top choices for MVP. He finished fourth in the voting in 2022 and is tied as the betting favorite for 2023.

Can Burrow take home the award this year?

Room for Growth

Burrow’s passing numbers have been on par with his peers’ elite marks in each of the past two seasons. He has averaged 4,543 passing yards, 34.5 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions in those two campaigns and has even shown growth between his second and third seasons. His sack rate -- a problematic 8.9% rate in 2021 -- came down to 6.3% in 2022, while his interception rate dropped 0.7 percentage points to just 2.0% in 2022.

There’s reason to believe his high volume of sacks could come down even more in 2023. According to Pro Football Focus, Burrow improved his pressure-to-sack rate by four percentage points in 2022, and the Bengals sought out Orlando Brown Jr. in free agency to help bolster their offensive line in the upcoming season.

Even a slight upgrade in sack prevention could pay huge dividends for the Bengals’ offense this year. A 2020 study from FiveThirtyEight deduced that offensive drives that included a sack were 18.2% more likely to end with a punt than drives without a sack, and they were 10.9% less likely to result in a touchdown for the offense. Even with improvement in this department in 2022, Burrow took 41 sacks, the sixth-most in the league.

That Burrow’s production has reached such impressive levels over the last two seasons despite his sack totals is a feat in and of itself. And while no offense can completely eliminate sacks, Burrow’s numbers could take another leap in 2023 if things continue to trend in the right direction for him and the Cincy offensive line.

Slow Starts, Fast Finishes

Looking at Burrow’s overall season numbers also ignores two major events that have affected his production: he has entered each of the past two seasons injured.

His breakout 2021 campaign got off to a slow start as he worked his way back from a torn ACL. It was impressive that he was even on the field for Week 1 that season after suffering his injury in the previous November. The Bengals’ offense started to take off once he got his feet underneath him.

An oft-overlooked aspect of the Bengals’ slow start to the 2022 season was that Burrow underwent an emergency appendectomy just before the start of the season and missed almost all of the preseason. That's obviously not ideal.

On top of that, Burrow’s Bengals immediately faced a meat-grinder of opposing defenses in the first three weeks of the season. The Pittsburgh Steelers – led by T.J. Watt – sacked Burrow seven times in Week 1. Micah Parsons' Dallas Cowboys got to Burrow for another six sacks in Week 2, and the New York Jets’ aggressive defense knocked Burrow down seven more times en route to a pair of sacks in Week 3.

Given the preseason surgery and the difficult opening schedule, it was a rough start to 2022 for Burrow. Understandably, Burrow exited September with a 91.3 QB Rating last season -- about average among NFL starters. Over the next three months of the regular season, his quarterback rating jumped up above 100.0. His year-end mark of 100.8 ranked sixth in the entire league despite his slow start.

Burrow's slow starts have still resulted in impressive season-long numbers, and 2023 is shaping up to be Burrow’s first fully-healthy offseason since his rookie year. The Bengals could come out of the gates blazing in 2023, especially with the Arizona Cardinals, Tennessee Titans and Cleveland Browns being three of their first five opponents.

Big-Time Bengals

Working in Burrow’s favor is the depth of Cincinnati’s wide receiver room. They boast two of the best receivers in the game in Tee Higgins and Ja'Marr Chase, and they have other capable pass-game weapons in Tyler Boyd, Irv Smith Jr. and Joe Mixon. Allen and Mahomes each have an elite weapon to rely on in Stefon Diggs and Travis Kelce, respectively, but the rest of their teams’ pass-catchers range from unproven to unreliable.

Having elite matchup winners has been a massive advantage for Burrow, one that has manifested itself on the field in multiple ways, including allowing Burrow to get the ball out of his hands quickly, which in turn limits pressure from opposing pass-rushers. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, he had an average time to throw of just 2.55 seconds in 2022. That ranked second-fastest in the entire league.

Cincy's ultra-talented receivers could become even more of a power multiplier for the Bengals’ offense in 2023. If Burrow takes fewer sacks and has more time to throw, Chase and Higgins may wind up with more targets, which is obviously a good thing.

The Bengals’ offense doesn’t have to rest all on Burrow’s shoulders when he can lean on multiple elite pass-catchers to make plays, something that can't be said for Allen and Mahomes.

Conclusion

With Mahomes and Allen, we don’t need to use our imaginations to envision what an MVP season would look like. Mahomes has already won the award twice and has been consistently incredible since entering the league, while Allen has been an offensive juggernaut almost on par with Mahomes over the past three seasons. But unlike those two, it feels like Burrow still has room to grow. His production has already rivaled Allen's and Mahomes' over the last two years despite his slow starts and shaky sack numbers.

If Burrow -- and the Bengals' offensive line -- can make improvements in avoiding sacks, and if he enters the season healthy, this could be a year where he sets career-best numbers across the board. Putting up those kinds of numbers on a successful team -- the Bengals are -340 to make the playoffs -- would surely put Burrow right in the thick of the MVP conversation.

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.