NFL Offensive Player of the Year 2024 Odds, History, and Predictions:

There are a lot of options in the Offensive Rookie of the Year betting market for 2024. We had six quarterbacks and seven wide receivers drafted in the first round. There were no first-round running backs and a surprise contender could emerge from that position group, but this is an award dominated by guys heavily involved in the passing game at this point.

One would think it takes a lot to win this award as a quarterback because the guys that play right away are often drafted to bad teams with bad offensive lines. While that is true, three of the last five winners have been QBs and nine of the last 14.

 

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Wide receivers have the other two wins in the last five seasons, but Ja’Marr Chase (2021) was something of an exception, in that the last WR to win prior to him was Odell Beckham Jr. in 2014. Before that, you have to go back to Percy Harvin in 2009.

Outliers are definitely a possibility, but let’s look at the last 10 Offensive Rookie of the Year winners and attempt to get a baseline for the stats and the circumstances that are required to be in the running.

Offensive Rookie of the Year Winners

Players: CJ Stroud, Garrett Wilson, Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray, Saquon Barkley, Alvin Kamara, Dak Prescott, Todd Gurley, Odell Beckham Jr.

By Position: 4 QB, 3 RB, 3 WR

By Draft Position (Round.Pick): 1.2; 1.10; 1.5; 1.6; 1.1; 1.2; 3.67 (Kamara); 4.135 (Prescott); 1.10; 1.12

Eight of the last 10 have been first-round picks and seven of those eight were top-10 picks. Opportunity matters as much as anything. First-round picks on bad teams, almost regardless of position, are a lock to start.

First-place votes (L5 years): 48 (Stroud); 18 (Wilson, runner-up Kenneth Walker III had 19); 42 (Chase); 41 (Herbert); 26.5 (Murray, runner-up Josh Jacobs had 13)

Nobody has been unanimous since Ben Roethlisberger in 2004 with all 48 votes. 

Also, team success isn’t exactly a prerequisite. The Texans, Bengals, Saints, and Cowboys were all division winners within the last 10 years, but the Jets, Chargers, Cardinals, Giants, Rams, and Giants were not.  

Stats of the Winners

CJ Stroud (2023)
Stroud started 15 of the team’s 17 games and had 499 pass attempts with a 23/5 TD/INT ratio. He led the league in INT% and passing yards per game with 273.9.

Garrett Wilson (2022)
Wilson played in all 17 games and had 83 catches for 1,103 yards and four touchdowns. Former Ohio State teammate Chris Olave was second among rookies with 1,042 receiving yards and finished fourth in the OROY voting. Wilson was 15th in receiving yards overall.

Ja’Marr Chase (2021)
The Joe Burrow connection definitely helped Chase here, as the rookie had 81 catches for 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns. It was arguably the best rookie season in this generation for a wide receiver. He was fourth in the NFL in receiving yards and third in touchdowns, which was definitely worthy of breaking the WR drought.

Justin Herbert (2020)
Herbert had a 31/10 TD/INT ratio and started 15 games in his rookie season. He threw for just under 290 yards per game and 4,336 yards total. Only Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, and Josh Allen threw for more yards and Herbert also finished 10th in TD passes.

Kyler Murray (2019)
Murray threw for 3,722 and ran for another 544 in his rookie year. In total, he accounted for 24 total touchdowns across 16 starts. He was the most-sacked QB in the NFL, but still did enough to garner 26.5 of the 50 first-place votes. That was a weak crop for rookies, but Murray was certainly the most impactful.

Saquon Barkley (2018)
Barkley was a Pro Bowler in his rookie year and led the NFL in yards from scrimmage with 2,028. He ran for 1,307 and added 721 more on 91 receptions and 121 targets. He was second to Ezekiel Elliott in rushing yards and edged him by 27 yards in total yardage. He actually ranked 13th in receptions and only Christian McCaffrey had more among running backs.

Alvin Kamara (2017)
Kamara ran for an insane 6.1 yards per carry during his rookie year and won the award, despite only starting three games. He played all 16 and, much like Barkley a year later, racked up a ton of yardage through the air. His 826 receiving yards are still a career-high. He actually only rushed for 728 yards, but had 13 total touchdowns. Despite the eye-popping all-purpose yardage total, he had 28 first-place votes to 21 for Kareem Hunt, who rushed for 1,327 yards and actually outgained Kamara from scrimmage.

Dak Prescott (2016)
Prescott’s relative lack of pedigree was a huge deal, as the fourth-round pick became the latest player drafted since Denver’s Mike Anderson in 2000 (sixth-rounder) to win OROY. To this day, Dak and Dennis Shaw (1970) are the only non-first-round QBs to win. He started all 16 games and had a 23/4 TD/INT ratio and actually finished sixth in MVP voting.

Teammate Ezekiel Elliott was the only other vote-getter and, in fact, got 21.5 of the 50 first-place votes.

Todd Gurley (2015)
In the Rams’ final season in St. Louis, Gurley played in 13 games and had 1,106 rushing yards. He only had 10 total touchdowns, all on the ground, but won comfortably. Gurley had 27 first-place votes and ranked third in rushing yards behind Adrian Peterson and Doug Martin.

Odell Beckham Jr. (2014)
Beckham led the league in receiving yards per game with 108.8, as he only played 12 games, but still racked up 91 catches for 1,305 yards. Despite the missed time, he was still 10th in receiving yards and tied for ninth in receptions.

What does this mean for 2024? Well, like I said, opportunity matters. You notice that all of those players stayed healthy enough to play a lot of games to rack up passing attempts, carries, and targets, but they were also on teams that gave them the chance to shine.

Even when Barkley and Kamara won, they were huge parts of the passing game. It is a pass-driven award at this stage, especially with no running back winning since 2018 and the diminished importance of running backs in terms of draft position.

Now, let’s turn it over to our VSiN hosts and contributors for their best bets in the Offensive Rookie of the Year market.

Matt Brown

Bo Nix 18/1

What my (or your) personal opinion of Bo Nix and how good he can be at the NFL level is irrelevant in this discussion. This bet is about price and opportunity. As of this writing, there are three rookie quarterbacks that are guaranteed to start Week 1 for their respective teams. The two favorites, Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, have odds 12 (Williams) and 3.5 (Daniels) times shorter than Nix. 

The offense is not devoid of talent. Courtland Sutton is a perfectly capable low-end WR1. He gets Year 2 of Marvin Mims. Tim Patrick and Greg Dulcich return from injury. They signed veteran wideout Josh Reynolds, while drafting Nix’s college teammate Troy Franklin. The cupboard is not bare. 

And finally, the Broncos have a paltry 5.5 win total. This tells us that they should be trailing in several games, giving Nix the opportunity to rack up some counting stats when the team is forced to ditch the run. Speaking of running, Nix ran for 744 yards in his final two seasons with Oregon, so he could chip in some stats there as well. If Nix can somehow guide this team to eight or nine wins, and Williams and Daniels don’t do anything to wow the voters, Nix would become the next logical choice. I’m not a huge fan of Nix the player, but again, that doesn’t really matter for this bet. 

Femi Abebefe

Bo Nix 18/1

Betting the rookie markets is such a crapshoot since we haven’t seen any of these players, but that also makes them really fun. While there’s uncertainty in how the rookies will play, there is a rubric you’ll want to follow when deciding who to bet on in this market. You want to bet on a first-round pick, and ideally, you want to bet on a quarterback. With that said, could I interest you in Bo Nix of the Denver Broncos?

Look, I watch college football just like everyone reading this, and if you asked me if I thought Nix would be a good NFL quarterback, I’d definitely say no. However, my GM Shuffle podcast partner, former NFL front office executive and general manager Michael Lombardi, told me when Sean Payton pounds the table for a quarterback – we should listen.

Payton clearly saw something in Nix that he likes for his offense and is betting his job on the 24-year-old quarterback out of Oregon. Payton is an incredibly competitive individual and, having worked in media in the past, I’m sure he’s heard all the critics talk about how he reached for Nix with the 12th overall pick in this past spring’s NFL Draft. Payton and the organization will do everything in their power to make this work, and to make it work early in Nix’s career.

I’d also be lying if I said the price on Nix isn’t why I love this pick the most. Barring a terrible training camp this August, Nix is expected to be the Broncos starting quarterback in Week 1. Since the league expanded to 32 teams in 2002, 10 quarterbacks have won Offensive Rookie of the Year. Of those 10, Ben Roethlisberger in 2004 and Vince Young in 2006 started the fewest number of games at 13. A quarterback must play early if they want a chance to win this award, and Nix checks that box on the Broncos.

Lack of playing time is one of the reasons why more quarterbacks haven’t won OROY. Teams used to exercise great patience before putting an inexperienced signal caller on the field. That’s not the case anymore as we’re expecting to see at least three rookie QBs start during Week 1, if not more. Nix has by far the longest odds (Caleb Williams +135, Jayden Daniels +550) of the three expected starters so I’ll lean into the uncertainty and back the guy nobody seems to want.

Finally, whether it was justified or not, Nix was a first-round pick. Guys who hear their name called on the first day of the draft receive exponentially more attention than players who had to wait until Friday or Saturday to hear their name called. Get this, over the last 22 years, 18 OROY winners were first-round picks. On the surface, it makes a ton of sense. Theoretically, first-round picks are better prospects than players selected in Rounds 2-7.

However, when you’re dealing with voters, you want to be backing the players they’re most familiar with because that’s what they’ll gravitate towards. The four players who won this award since 2002 that were picked outside the first round were running back Clinton Portis (2002), wide receiver Anquan Boldin (2003), quarterback Dak Prescott (2016) and running back Alvin Kamara (2017). Portis finished fourth in the league in rushing, Boldin was third in the league in receptions and receiving yards, Prescott was third in QBR and Kamara benefitted from a Deshaun Watson ACL injury earlier in the season.

So whether you agree with my choice of Bo Nix or not, just make sure you go with a skill-position player who went in the first round. The odds are in your favor.

Zachary Cohen

Caleb Williams +135

I’ll be honest, I wanted to see Justin Fields get another crack at it with Chicago. I understand the salary cap ramifications of keeping him, and I get that Williams is a tremendous prospect. But I can’t help but think that we’d be having a different conversation right now if not for some extremely conservative play calling in the second halves of games the Bears were winning. But that’s neither here nor there. 

Williams enters the league as one of the more physically gifted quarterbacks we’ve seen in quite some time. Sure, Williams doesn’t have the prototypical height that teams are looking for. But he makes up for that in arm talent. Williams has an absolute cannon for an arm, and he can make every throw in the book. And that remains true even when the former USC star is throwing on the move. Williams is also a good enough runner to put fear in opposing defenses. Of course, a lot of that also applies to Commanders rookie Jayden Daniels. But the difference is tha Williams is playing in an offense that is absolutely loaded. 

There might not be a pass-catching trio in the league that is better than D.J. Moore, Keenan Allen and rookie Rome Odunze. And Cole Kmet is also a weapon at tight end. When you add in the fact that Chicago has been working to build its offensive line, it’s just hard to think of a better situation for a rookie quarterback. That said, even if Williams takes some lumps, I see him putting up some big numbers in Year 1. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Chicago makes the playoffs. That should all be enough to earn him this award. 

It would obviously be nice to get a better number than this, but I decided pretty early on that I’ll take whatever I can get here. 

Adam Burke

Keon Coleman 25/1

This has been a popular pick throughout the offseason, as better prices were available earlier, but I still like it. Coleman has been a media darling already and that’s important because reporters vote on these markets.

As I wrote about above, opportunity is the most important thing. Coleman will have opportunities for targets and touchdowns with Stefon Diggs in Houston. Diggs joined the Bills for the 2020 season. From 2020-23, Diggs had 644 targets, 445 catches, and 37 touchdowns. He had 17 of Buffalo’s 66 red-zone targets. Gabe Davis was second with 13 and he’s also gone. 

With Diggs and Davis gone, Coleman was the only WR drafted and he’s got good size at 6-foot-3 to be an option in the scoring areas. His college stats don’t pop like the other WRs in this class, especially with seven taken in the first round, but Josh Allen needs a guy to rely on and Coleman is the best option.

Jonathan Von Tobel

Marvin Harrison Jr. +700

Arizona is my dark horse team this season, and if I’m correct, then that would mean a strong season from Harrison. The rookie wide receiver was considered to be the best overall prospect in his class and, unlike MVP, receivers have a fair shot at winning this award. Kyler Murray loves to target his best pass-catcher with high volume. Harrison will benefit from that while helping bring the Cardinals to about seven wins this season. He has a better chance at this award than +700 would indicate.

Patrick Meagher

Jayden Daniels +550

Daniels is just on a crazy trajectory. The confidence is off the charts, and I think it carries over into his rookie season with the Commanders. This sets up nicely for Daniels with a veteran offensive line and receivers. Kliff Kingsbury running the offense will nicely take advantage of his running abilities, which are exceptional. The schedule isn’t brutal in terms of opposing defenses, and the vibes are just very different and improved with the franchise. The Commanders aren’t a great team, so there will also be plenty of dramatic, come-from-behind opportunities for Daniels to show off.

Tim Murray

Jayden Daniels +550

The offense line is a concern in Washington, but Jayden Daniels has the potential to thrive in his rookie season in the nation’s capital. While the Commanders do not have an elite wide receiver on the roster, Terry McLaurin is a solid top target. Entering Year 3, Jahan Dotson has been a bit of a disappointment, but the talent is there. Washington spent a second-round pick on TE Ben Sinnott and a third on WR Luke McCaffrey. Kliff Kingsbury enters as the new offensive coordinator and will no doubt look to put Daniels in the best situation to succeed. While +550 is certainly not a “long shot”, Daniels will be the starter Day 1 in Washington and has the talent to bring home Offensive Rookie of the Year.

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