NFL MVP Betting: Is the Award in Mac Jones' Range of Outcomes?

The 2022 season was not a great time to be a fan of the New England Patriots. The team has fallen quite a distance from the heights they reached with Tom Brady at quarterback.

However, it wasn’t too long ago that things looked a little sunnier for the Pats. Mac Jones put together a surprisingly spunky rookie season -- even getting the team into the playoffs in 2021. His rookie year was far from perfect, but it at least provided a beacon of hope for a franchise that was still working through the loss of a future Hall of Famer.

Let’s pause there for a moment. If you knew Mac Jones had +6000 NFL MVP betting odds after his rookie season – which he currently does on the FanDuel Sportsbook – you might think he’d make for an interesting sleeper candidate to place a bet on. Unfortunately, we all saw what happened in 2022.

The wheels completely fell off for the Pats in 2022. The team made the baffling decision to not only rehire former defensive coordinator Matt Patricia – whose brief tenure as the head coach of the Detroit Lions alienated several of that team’s best players and ended in disaster – but also allowed him to run their offense. Patricia didn’t even start the offseason as the official offensive coordinator, either; the team made him compete against former special teams coordinator and failed New York Giants head coach Joe Judge – who also had no background on the offensive side of the ball – for play-calling rights. They only officially named Patricia the coordinator after the beginning of the season.

Predictably, letting Patricia – a defensive coordinator – run the offense yielded extremely poor results. The Patriots’ offense withered away in 2022, and tensions rose to heated levels between Patricia and Mac Jones over the course of the year. The gameday broadcasts treated fans of the team to near-weekly outbursts of frustration from Patriots players on the sidelines as their season spiraled down the drain.

Fortunately, the Patriots moved on from Patricia this offseason, and appear to be turning to a new chapter. Bill O’Brien – who is an offensive coordinator – will be running the offense for them in 2023.

Investing in the Offense

The only bright spot of the Patriots’ 2022 offense was running back Rhamondre Stevenson. Stevenson was the engine of the offense on the ground, rushing for 1,040 yards and 5 scores on 210 carries but also led the team in receptions. He compiled 69 catches for 421 yards and a touchdown through the air. It’s usually not great when your running back leads the team in receptions, so it is encouraging that the team made investments in pass-catchers in the 2023 offseason.

The first big move of the Patriots’ offseason was the signing of wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen Smith-Schuster play like the 1,400-yard receiver he was as a sophomore in the league, but even through injuries, he was a valuable contributor to the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense as they barrelled to a Super Bowl victory. Fans of the team were sad to see Jakobi Meyers depart for Las Vegas in free agency, but Smith-Schuster should be able to provide at least as much offensive output as Meyers at a minimum.

The team also made a positive switch at the tight end position, trading Jonnu Smith to the Atlanta Falcons and bringing in pass-catching specialist Mike Gesicki from the Miami Dolphins in free agency. Smith’s big-play ability during his first few seasons with the Titans earned him a surprisingly large contract with the Patriots during the 2021 offseason, but the athletic tight end revealed himself to be too inconsistent to be a contributor to the Patriots’ offense; despite his massive contract, he was all but phased out of the team’s offensive plans.

Gesicki should offer an immediate upgrade over Smith and might have a case as the best pass-catcher on the team entering the season. The former Dolphin had a down 2022 season under Mike McDaniel’s San Francisco-inspired offense but had operated successfully as a high-volume receiving threat in each of his three previous seasons. His 780 receiving yards in 2021 were more than a Patriots’ tight end has compiled in any season since Rob Gronkowski in 2017.

The Pats have also added an uncharacteristic number of receivers during the past two drafts. 2022 second-round pick Tyquan Thornton is hands-down the fastest player on the team and had flashes of upside in his rookie year, while rookies Demario Douglas and Kayshon Boutte could bolster the depth chart behind DeVante Parker and Kendrick Bourne. The team is even courting free agent receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Even if Hopkins ends up with another team, the Patriots’ interest in him demonstrates their new willingness to invest in pass-catchers for the first time in a long time.

An Optimistic Outlook

Directing those pieces on offense will now fall to Bill O’Brien, whose offenses with the Houston Texans yielded strong results in the NFL and whose two seasons with the Alabama Crimson Tide finished with the third- and fourth-best offenses in college football. While Jones and O’Brien never quite overlapped for a football season at Alabama, the two had a notably favorable relationship while Jones aided O’Brien in getting up to speed in Tuscaloosa.

If moving on from Matt Patricia and adding talented players to the offensive side of the ball can buoy the floor of the Patriots’ offense in 2023, having Bill O’Brien steer the ship could elevate them into a strong offense.

Even without considering the upgrades the team made amongst their personnel and play-callers, the team is due for a significant amount of regression in 2023. As bad as things seemed during the 2022 season, the Patriots still finished the year with 364 points – the 17th-most in the league. That number starts to look a bit funny when you consider that the Patriots scored the sixth-most field goals in the league.

A few things can cause a drive to end in a field goal attempt, but perhaps nothing is more responsible for an attempted field goal than an unsuccessful red zone drive. The Patriots' offense had a lot of those last year. Across the entire league, no team converted red zone opportunities into touchdowns at a lower rate than the Patriots’ paltry 42.4% rate last season. They ranked dead last in red zone touchdowns (19) on the season. Even the literal worst offenses in the league had more success once they reached the red zone last season.

Reading between the lines, getting those field goal opportunities indicates that the Patriots’ offense was about average at getting the ball into their opponent’s side of the field; they were just abysmal when it came to capitalizing on those opportunities.

That’s the kind of stuff that can happen when a defensive coordinator calls your offensive plays. Mac Jones finished the year with 8 passing touchdowns inside the opponents’ 20-yard line. Even Taylor Heinicke had more red zone touchdowns (9) than Jones last year, and Heinicke played only 9 games for a struggling Washington Commanders offense. With a real offensive coordinator running the red-zone offense, the Patriots should be able to turn more of those drives into touchdowns.

The floor for the Patriots’ offense is going to be so much higher than people might realize entering the 2023 offense. That’s going to put Jones in a significantly better position throughout the season and could even vault him into the MVP conversation.

Mac Jones Was a Stud at Alabama

With how poorly the 2022 season went, it can be easy to forget just how good Mac Jones was as a collegiate quarterback.

Jones spent the first season and a half at Alabama backing up future Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. He was thrust into the starting job towards the end of his sophomore season after Tagovailoa suffered a devastating hip injury, but the team’s offense didn’t seem to sputter at all; the Crimson Tide offense scored 80 points in his 2 games as the starter.

Jones’ 2020 season was outrageous. He and the Crimson Tide didn’t drop a single game over the course of the year on their way to a National Championship title, scoring more points than any other team in college football. Much of the credit for Jones’ performance was attributed to receiver DeVonta Smith, but Jones still completed a ridiculous, record-setting 77.4% of his passes for 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns, and just 4 interceptions.

Jones excelled at avoiding negative plays as a college passer. If only throwing four interceptions while attempting the fourth-most passes wasn’t impressive enough – and it should be – Jones was also elite at eluding pressure. He took only 10 sacks over the course of the season behind Alabama’s impressive offensive line, but also only allowed 12.3% of the pressures his offensive line allowed to turn into sacks. As a prospect, he drew criticism from draft analysts for struggling outside of structure and in the face of pressure, but his production in those tells a different tale. He graded as PFF’s seventh-best passer in college football when pressured that season. Maybe he didn’t look great to the naked eye in those situations, but to steal a line from Billy Beane, Jones wasn’t trying to sell jeans. He was trying to win football games.

Jones built on his outstanding final collegiate season during his first year in the NFL while playing on a talent-thin Patriots roster. He helped elevate players like Jakobi Meyers, Kendrick Bourne, and even Brandon Bolden to career-best receiving seasons as some of the team’s top pass-catchers. His 2.5% interception rate that year was the lowest mark of any of that season’s rookies, and he was elite at avoiding sacks with his 5.1% sack rate.

Let’s throw the 2022 season out the window. Jones should be set up to continue on the upwards trajectory laid out in his 2019-21 seasons and could help lead the Patriots to their best scoring offense since the days of Tom Brady.

A Brutal AFC East

The Patriots will need Jones to reach new heights if they want to truly compete in the AFC East this season. While the Pats long had the benefit of playing against borderline incompetent iterations of the Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, and New York Jets, they currently have the longest odds to win the AFC East this year, sitting at +750 on FanDuel Sportsbook.

Each of their three rivals has a legitimate case for the crown this year. The Bills have been one of the best teams in the league in recent years with Josh Allens development into a star, the Dolphins’ offense reached new heights under Mike McDaniel last season, and the Jets have brought in four-time MVP-winner Aaron Rodgers to complement their elite defense. It wasn’t too long ago that you could write the Patriots’ name in pen at the top of their division each season, but the AFC East is now one of the most frightening divisions in the sport.

Winning the AFC East will be critical to an MVP bid for Jones this season. Virtually every MVP winner since the NFL’s 2002 expansion has led their team to a division title -- or at least helped their team post a record that tied the technical winner. It’s a borderline prerequisite for any MVP contender. In Jones’ case, toppling the AFC East holds twofold value; some of his top competition for the award this year play in his own division.

Josh Allen is tied for the best odds (+700) to win the MVP award this season while Rodgers (+1600) and Tagovailoa (+1600) trail not far behind him. Winning the AFC East would turn Jones into a legitimate MVP contender while simultaneously knocking off some of his stiffest competition.

Jones' 2023 Outlook

At +6000 odds to win the NFL MVP award this season, it’s pretty obvious that things will need to break right for Mac Jones to even put his name into consideration for the title. However, those odds do seem to be factoring the team’s disastrous 2022 season into the equation a little too heavily considering the massive strides the team has taken to course correct for the 2023 campaign.

We’re only a couple of years removed from watching Jones and his Alabama teammates hoist a National Championship, and he’s an underrated sleeper candidate for a massive bounceback 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.