NFL MVP Betting: Will Geno Smith Take Another Step Forward?

Few storylines from the 2022 NFL seasons were more fun to follow than the breakout of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith.

Smith entered the league as a second-round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft. He posted three elite seasons as a passer while at West Virginia between 2010-2012, capping his collegiate career off by completing an impressive 71.2% of his passes for 4,205 yards, 42 touchdowns, and just 6 interceptions in his final season. At the time NFL Draft analysts attributed much of that team’s success to future first-round pick wide receiver Tavon Austin, but with the benefit of hindsight, it feels like we can safely say now that Smith was the engine of that offense.

Unfortunately, Smith didn’t really get a fair shake once he got to the NFL. The 2013 and 2014 New York Jets barely fielded a competitive group of wide receivers. Both teams relied heavily on Jeremy Kerley to move the chains, and the addition of Eric Decker in 2014 wasn’t quite enough to move the needle. Smith was benched at multiple points during that season, and after his infamous altercation with a teammate in the 2015 preseason, it was assumed that we had pretty much seen the last of Smith in the NFL.

Smith didn’t see the field much after that point until 2017 when New York Giants head coach Ben McAdoo decided to bench a struggling Eli Manning in favor of Smith partway through the season. The move cost McAdoo his job as the team’s head coach, and interim head coach Steve Spagnuolo reinstated Manning as the starter for the remainder of the season.

It was essentially radio silence from Smith for the next few seasons. He spent time as Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert’s backup before landing with the Seahawks. It wasn’t until 2021 that he found his way back into a starting job when incumbent starter Russell Wilson was sidelined by a finger injury.

We can all pretty much remember what happened after that. The Seahawks traded Wilson away to the Denver Broncos for a haul of picks then looked better than ever with Geno Smith under center while Wilson’s Broncos floundered. Smith’s Seahawks toppled Wilson’s Broncos in the first week of the 2022 NFL season, and Smith went on to win the Comeback Player of the Year award for his efforts.

Heading into the 2023 NFL season, the NFL MVP odds at the FanDuel Sportsbook have Smith at +3000 to take home the Most Valuable Player award, the 13th-best odds across the entire league. His career has been a bumpy ride, but Smith could put together an MVP-worthy campaign with the Seahawks this season.

Building Off a Strong Debut

Smith didn’t really look like a quarterback that had ridden the bench for almost a decade when he won the starting job last year. He maintained the elite accuracy that was a feature of his collegiate days, completing a league-best 69.8% of his passes in 2023 while tossing 4,282 yards, 30 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions.

What was particularly remarkable about the Seahawks’ season was their apparent willingness to hand over the reins to Smith in their offense. He attempted 572 passes over the course of the season -- more than Wilson ever did in a single season (though Smith did have the benefit of playing a 17th game). Where once fans called for the Seahawks to “Let Russ Cook”, Smith took hold of the Seahawks’ offense while they finished ninth in the league in total offensive scoring.

Smith’s comeback season was seriously impressive. He spent years and years and years on the bench only to play like an above-average passer leading a top-10 offense once he finally got his shot, but being an above-average passer almost definitely won’t be enough to win him an MVP award in 2023. He’ll need to take a step forward to put up a strong case to win the MVP award over his peers this year, and there’s reason to believe he might.

Playing quarterback in the NFL is a tough enough job already, but it’s probably even harder when you’re playing with guys you’ve barely practiced with. Smith played with the Seahawks’ second unit while Russell Wilson started for the team, then spent much of the 2022 offseason in an apparent “quarterback battle” with Drew Lock. Entering the 2023 season, Smith now has an entire season of reps as the Seahawks’ starter under his belt. Those extra practices and in-game reps with the starters should help him reach new heights in 2023. We’re not talking about him taking some kind of crazy Year 1 to Year 2 leap like we’ve seen young quarterbacks like Jared Goff and Trevor Lawrence take in their careers, but we could see a more refined passing attack from Smith in 2023.

Part of the reason for that optimism is that the Seahawks will be returning both Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalf for the upcoming season. Both players finished last season with over 1,000 receiving yards as they developed chemistry with a new quarterback. They’ve now had a whole season and an offseason of working with Smith to continue growing with each other.

The Seahawks bolstered their pass-catcher group by adding Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft, as well. Smith-Njigba famously led an Ohio State team littered with first-round picks in receiving in the 2021 college football season, catching 95 passes for 1,606 yards and 9 scores alongside Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson -- as well as potential 2024 first-rounders Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka. In what was one of the most loaded receiver corps in college football history, Smith-Njigba found a way to put up massive numbers. It’s tough to think of any other experience that could have better prepared him to play alongside NFL talents like Lockett and Metcalf.

Rookie receivers don’t always make an immediate impact on their offenses in their first seasons, but on paper Smith-Njigba adds an element to the Seahawks’ offense that was sorely missing in previous years. In addition to just being a third wide-out – something the team lacked in 2022 – Smith-Njigba gives Smith and the Seahawks’ offense a layup option.

Making Layups

For those who may not follow basketball, a layup is typically regarded as the easiest way for a player to put points on the board. It’s usually a shot taken from as close to the hoop as possible and has a high rate of success. The Seahawks' offense didn’t have any layup options in 2022.

For as good as Metcalf and Lockett are, they’re not perfect players; they both have limitations. Metcalf’s elite combination of size and speed makes him a massive target on the boundaries of the field and a threat to take any deep targets to the house. He ranked sixth best in the league in yards per route run against man coverage and was a nightmare for defenders to cover one-on-one. Lockett provided savvy route-running against zone coverage last season while continuing to make use of his speed as a downfield option.

But neither of those players, good as they are, gave the Seahawks that layup option. Lockett’s smaller size limited him as a slot player, and his 3.3 yards after the catch per reception ranked outside the top 100 in the league. Metcalf and Lockett combined for just 9 total targets on screen passes and turned those screens into just 36 total yards. If 9 screens sounds like a small number, that’s because it is. Chris Moore had 10 such opportunities for the Houston Texans last season. Basically every team in the league had at least one player who had more screen targets than either of the Seahawks’ top wideouts combined. The team’s offense worked in 2022, but they were basically playing on hard difficulty.

Smith-Njigba can unlock that whole facet of the passing offense if he lives up to expectations. He operated best as a slot receiver at the college level and has almost 20 pounds of mass over Lockett. Both players can operate out of the slot for the Seahawks, but now the team won’t need to send Lockett’s diminutive frame into the mess of the middle of the field to move the chains. They have a (hopefully elite) specialist at that now.

Smith-Njigba racked up an impressive 7.5 yards after the catch per reception when playing in the slot during his breakout season for Ohio State. That rate ranked second in the entire nation among qualifying receivers with only Western Kentucky wideout Jerreth Sterns putting up more. He was, frankly, the best in the business when it came to creating yards out of the slot for his quarterbacks. He finished his 13-game 2021 season with 19 forced missed tackles according to PFF. The Seahawks’ wide receivers combined for 20 forced missed tackles over 17 games last year.

Perhaps no game better illustrated the Seahawks’ lack of a YAC threat in their passing attack than their Wild Card game against the San Francisco 49ers. In that contest, Metcalf led the Seahawks in yards after the catch with 45 yards. He had more than the rest of his own team (32 YAC) combined. 49ers receiver Deebo Samuel finished the game with more YAC than the entire Seahawks’ offense combined, racking up 111 yards after the catch as the 49ers advanced out of the Wild Card round. The rest of the 49ers compiled 74 YAC -- roughly as much as the entire Seahawks’ output.

The Seahawks fell behind in that contest and struggled to continue moving the chains without a reliable layup option for Smith in the passing game. The 49ers dialed up the pressure after they cemented their lead, and Smith was forced to throw to options like Dareke Young and Cade Johnson to get anything going through the air. Things could have gone much differently with a bonafide YAC threat to help the Seahawks pick up easy yardage.

Having that talented pass-catcher to lean on when the pressure mounts could be massive for Smith, whose completion percentages sank almost 20% when facing pressure, in this upcoming season. A more versatile arsenal of offensive weaponry will give Smith even more opportunities to fill out the box score and put up MVP-level numbers.

A Division Up For Grabs

It feels like the Seahawks’ chances of winning the NFC West are being massively overlooked at this point in the offseason. The aforementioned 49ers (-165) have the best odds to win the NFC West, according to the FanDuel Sportsbook, giving them the best odds in the league to win their own division. The Seahawks have respectable +220 odds, but the real-life margin between those two teams is much closer than the odds imply.

For starters, the 49ers seem to be banking on Brock Purdy leading them back to a division title this season. To his credit, Purdy played shockingly well last season – especially compared to the usual expectations for a “Mr. Irrelevant” pick in the draft. But Purdy benefitted from having one of the most talented pass-catching groups in the league at his disposal in the 49ers' end-of-season and playoff runs. The 49ers pretty much just asked him to put the ball in his supporting casts’ hands and avoid turnovers.

He did that remarkably well in relief of Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo, but it feels fans are getting ahead of themselves with their evaluations of Purdy. His five regular season wins came mostly against extremely weak competition, and the 49ers’ post-season run featured his pass-catchers and running backs making elite plays to carry them to the NFC Championship game. Again, Purdy played well, but we aren’t talking about Patrick Mahomes here.

It also needs to be addressed that Purdy suffered an elbow injury in that NFC Championship game. He will likely miss the entire offseason while he rehabs that injury and isn’t even necessarily a lock to be available by Week 1 of the season. Elbow injuries seem especially scary for quarterbacks as well; Ben Roethlisberger’s career essentially came to an end after he suffered a similar injury. There’s no guarantee Purdy will be the same player when he returns to the starting lineup.

The relative vulnerability of their chief competition for the division sets the Seahawks up well to take home the title by the end of the regular season. Sharp Football Analysis’ strength of schedule system ranks the Seahawks as having the 10th-easiest schedule for the upcoming season. The NFL win total betting odds market has the Seahawks’ win total set at 8.5 for the season, and the lean is already -142 to the over on that line. With an easier schedule and low level of competition from their own division, they could be set up well to both win the division and put up a surprising number of wins.

Piling up wins has been critical to the success of past MVP candidates. Virtually no recent MVP winner has finished worse than first in their division (Adrian Peterson’s 2012 Vikings being the exception), and each of those MVP-winners’ teams has won at least 11 games in those seasons. It’s never easy to win 11 or more games, but the Seahawks are set up surprisingly well to do just that. They have the best healthy quarterback in their division, a stacked group of pass-catchers, and an approach under head coach Pete Carroll that has helped them win the division 5 times in his 13 seasons.

Smith's 2023 Outlook

Before last season, not many people would have guessed that Geno Smith would be an MVP candidate heading into 2023. We probably would have called them crazy if they did, but compared to his peers, Geno Smith’s NFL MVP odds look pretty good. His +3000 odds rank 14th-best in the league.

The Seahawks’ passing offense is poised to take another step forward with the extra year of experience under Smith’s belt and with the exciting addition of wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the draft. Given a weak NFC West makes for an easier strength of schedule for the 2023 season, the Seahawks could be set up surprisingly well to take down the division and post double-digit wins. Smith has a sneaky-good case as a sleeper candidate to take home the NFL MVP award this season

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.