BetMaryland.com sports betting analyst Bill Ordine chatted with PressBox about the NFL midseason futures bets he likes, including a dark horse for MVP.
This has been edited for content and clarity.
PressBox: When is a good time to reassess preseason expectations and look into midseason futures bets?
Bill Ordine: The answer to that question is [around Week 5]. We’re beginning to see really what teams are made of. There have been some shifts in futures lines, but some of those futures lines have been sticky and as a result, there are some bargains out there, at least in terms of value. To be quite specific, one that jumps out at me is the Seattle Seahawks. … I’ve always been a Pete Carroll fan in terms of what he will do with whatever he’s got. Seattle was 50-1 to win the Super Bowl [entering Week 5]. You can scale that back to either winning the division or winning the conference. My sense of the Seahawks is that if you like the Seahawks, you don’t necessarily like them to win the division because that is a difficult hill to climb with the 49ers in the way. However, if someone else can knock off the 49ers for you in the playoffs, a team like the Seahawks could kind of squeak their way into the conference championship.
PB: Do you like any other under-the-radar teams to win their conference?
BO: The AFC South is still, in my mind, an extremely weak division. The rookie quarterbacks in Indianapolis and Houston, to me, are still liabilities. The Titans’ situation, I can never figure out who Ryan Tannehill is, but we think that we know that the Jaguars’ quarterback is for real. And we know that their coach has won a Super Bowl. Having said all that, they had a real choppy beginning of the season, and they’re sitting with [long] odds to win the Super Bowl. Again, you can scale that back to the conference odds. They are worth an informed lottery ticket purchase.
The Jaguars are clearly the chalk to win the division, but that is also the problem [with those odds]. They’re still carrying their preseason odds, which reflected how the quarterback improved last year and that huge playoff comeback, so you’re not getting much of a bargain with the Jaguars division-wise. The further-out wager is probably the better value there.
There’s someone else I’m going to mention that might surprise you, and that’s Cincinnati. They’re a team whose odds have plummeted because of the quarterback being hurt and getting off to a [slow] start. They’re really behind the 8-ball in the division. But again, that’s a team that just needs to get into the tournament. If that team gets healthy, they can do what they’ve done in prior years, which is to go to the conference championship and even the Super Bowl. They have been notorious slow starters. That has simply been their habit. This year their slow start was associated with the health of their quarterback, which is a new wrinkle in their slow start. If he doesn’t get better, they’re just going to struggle all year long.
PB: Are there any trends that you picked up on early in the season?
BO: In both writing and as a gaming analyst, I’ve always focused on the quarterbacks. The quarterback situation in the league is at as low an ebb as it has been in years. Before the season began I said, “When this season opens on Week 1, the unders are just going to crush this thing,” and they did. With that many inexperienced quarterbacks, it was going to be difficult to put points on the board. The choppiness of the quarterback play, the unevenness of the quarterback play, that’s a trend. As things go on, these young quarterbacks are going to have greater and greater difficulty. Whatever it is that they do well — whether it’s escape the pocket, whether they’ve got a deep game — the opposition is going to figure that out and they’re going to be in trouble.
PB: How do unstable quarterback situations impact bettors on Sundays?
BO: It puts a lot of randomness into your picks. I’m going to fall back on the quarterback matchup. I realize the quarterbacks don’t play against each other, but at least at this stage of this season, I would lean on known quantities at quarterback — almost regardless of any other factors in the game — and defenses. Rely on defenses. Who’s playing good defense? Which is, by the way, one of the reasons I like Seattle. And coaching … again, I’m coming back to Pete Carroll here. He’s been at one franchise recently, but he has had a lot of different coaching jobs. His success reminds me of Joe Gibbs, who of course was at one franchise but had a bunch of different quarterbacks going through his hands and won three Super Bowls with three different guys. … With the unevenness, what I would lean on this season right now is the more accomplished quarterback, the solid defenses and coaches who have shown that they can operate in uncertain environments themselves.
PB: Do any NFL award futures stand out to you?
BO: Joe Burrow has fallen significantly [in MVP odds], but if he gets better and if that team makes a run, everybody is going to credit Joe Burrow for that happening. But if you want to place a safe bet, the safe bets are Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes. The rookies are wide open. It just depends on who happens to have a good game, where those odds go. I would look at them. A running back has an opportunity to win Offensive Rookie of the Year, certainly more so than with the MVP. That’s almost always a quarterback. I don’t care how outstanding Christian McCaffrey is.
I do have a pick for you on NFL MVP, a dark horse in terms of the odds he’s getting — Brock Purdy. Brock Purdy just keeps putting up Ws. His individual stats aren’t spectacular, but he keeps winning. He is a value bet right now. If San Francisco were to put together a [one- or two-loss season] … Brock Purdy could conceivably be the MVP, predicated on what the team does. If he takes the team to a 15-2 finish, yeah, he has a chance to be the MVP.
PB: Do you like any Ravens futures bets?
BO: The hometown guy, Lamar Jackson, has a reasonable number [for MVP]. He can do that. He can win the MVP again. He’s done it once. He’s in people’s minds. And a lot of the time, that MVP contest is a little bit of a beauty pageant. It’s who can stick in the minds of the league at large, and Jackson will. Jackson can take this team to a very favorable regular-season record — and he’s very capable of doing that because the Ravens have, I think a very favorable schedule. Jackson is not a bad wager, either.
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox