NFL Offensive Player of the Year Betting: Tyreek Hill Doesn't Feel Like an Underdog

I’m not sure we’ve spent enough time appreciating just how ridiculous Tyreek Hill’s 2022 season was. You don’t usually expect receivers to leave the best quarterback in the league (Patrick Mahomes) and get better. You especially don’t expect those receivers to finish with over 1,700 receiving yards in their first season with their new team.

That’s exactly what Tyreek Hill did last year, parting ways with the Kansas City Chiefs and taking up shop with Tua Tagovailoa and the Miami Dolphins.

Building off of that impressive campaign, Hill now has the fourth-best NFL Offensive Player of the Year betting odds at +2000 for the upcoming season. Receivers have won the award in three of the last four seasons with stat lines similar to Hill’s in 2022. It could be his turn to take home the honors in 2023.

Welcome to Miami

The 2022 season sure looked like the dawn of a new era for the Dolphins. With the hire of first-time head coach Mike McDaniel the team signaled a completely new approach to their offense – get the ball into the hands of the fastest players on the field.

That new approach paid massive dividends in Year 1 and likely would not have been possible without the offseason acquisition of Tyreek Hill via trade. Hill’s explosive playmaking ability was a perfect complement to the explosive playmaking ability of Jaylen Waddle, which paired well with the explosive playmaking ability from running back Raheem Mostert. That approach led to Tua Tagovailoa leading the league in several of the metrics we use to identify efficient quarterback play, including touchdown rate (6.3%), adjusted yards per attempt (9.2), and yards per completion (13.7). If he had played a full season and managed to sustain those numbers, he would have given Mahomes a serious run for his money as an MVP candidate.

Tagovailoa’s massive efficiency during his first season in McDaniel’s system allowed both Hill and Waddle to thrive. Hill finished the year with 119 catches for 1,710 yards and 7 touchdowns and could have had a case to be the 2022 Offensive Player of the Year (OPOY) were it not for the existence of Justin Jefferson. Across from Hill, Waddle finished 7th in the league with his 1,356 receiving yards, scoring 8 times over his 75 receptions.

The crazy thing is that those receivers’ numbers could have been even better if their starting quarterback hadn’t suffered multiple head injuries during the season. Tua Tagovailoa missed four full games during the 2022 season. Hill had no more than 55 yards in three of those games (he did demolish a league-worst Minnesota Vikings defense for 177 yards in Week 6). A full season of a healthy Tagovailoa could be all it takes for Hill to take home the OPOY crown in 2023.

A Track Record of Excellence

Hill’s +2000 odds to win the 2023 OPOY award tie him with Cooper Kupp for the fourth-best odds in the league -- and third-best among receivers. The two front-runners are Cincinnati Bengals receiver Ja'Marr Chase (+1200) and the aforementioned Jefferson (+1400).

What Hill has that most of his primary competitors lack is an extended track record of excellence. Jefferson and Chase are both on rare trajectories as receivers through the opening years of their careers, but neither has produced for as many years as Hill. The same goes for Kupp, who only recently emerged as one of the most productive receivers in the league.

We’ve seen Hill produce across a variety of different situations, making him seemingly one of the most situation-independent receivers in the league. As a rookie, he averaged a whopping 11.1 yards per carry as a gadget player while scoring 12 separate times between the rushing, receiving, and return games. In 2017 he transitioned to a more full-time receiver role, amassing 75 catches for 1,183 yards and 7 touchdowns as the primary receiver for Alex Smith. We all know how much of a baller he was in his multiple seasons with Patrick Mahomes after that, and now he has produced with the Miami Dolphins in a situation completely removed from Andy Reid.

That year-in, year-out consistency means Hill is always contending for one of the top spots on the receiving leaderboards in each season and keeps his name relevant throughout each year in the minds of the year-end awards voters. That becomes pretty apparent when you realize he’s made the Pro Bowl in all of his seven seasons, and has made the All-Pro First-Team in more seasons (four) than not.

Heating Up in South Beach

Hill’s first season with the Dolphins was a smashing success, and as we alluded to earlier, there’s even more room for growth. His production began to trail off towards the back half of the 2022 seasons (which is crazy to say with regards to a 1,700-yard season), which coincided with when Tagovailoa’s injuries began piling up.

Through the first 9 games of the 2022 season, Hill caught 76 passes for 1,104 yards and 3 touchdowns. He was actually on pace to become the first receiver in NFL history to crest 2,000 receiving yards in a single season had he kept that production up – his 17-game pace would have seen him catch 144 passes for 2,085 yards.

Unfortunately, the Dolphins’ offense started to sputter after that point. Tagovailoa had clearly been rattled by the back-to-back head injuries he had suffered, and the team dropped five straight games during that stretch. Their only wins in the back half of the year came against the Cleveland Browns, the Houston Texans, and the New York Jets in Week 18 – some of the worst teams in the entire league.

Through the final 8 games of the season, Hill caught 43 passes for 606 yards and 4 touchdowns. Those numbers look pretty disappointing when you line them up against his stats from the first 9 games of the season, but still put him on track for a respectable 17-game pace of 91 catches for 1,288 yards and 8 touchdowns. Given proper context, that’s pretty impressive in its own right. Even as the Dolphins’ offense cratered, Hill was still producing the kind of numbers that would get him drafted in the very early rounds of a fantasy football draft.

Tyreek's 2023 Outlook

The sky might honestly be the limit for Hill in 2023 if a 91/1,288/8 line looked like his floor last season.

If the team can keep Tagovailoa healthy and upright for a full 17 games, there’s a chance we get to witness the first 2,000-yard receiving season in NFL history. That upside alone makes Hill an interesting bet at +2000 to win the Offensive Player of the Year award, and his arguably-league-best floor as a receiver means he’ll be keeping his name on ballots throughout the entirety of the long NFL season.

His chief competitors for the award each have valid cases for the 2023 season, but none have the same ridiculous track record of excellence that Hill has maintained since he entered the league in 2016.

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.