NFL Rookie Receiving Yards Betting: The Case for Jonathan Mingo

Looking at the NFL Rookie Betting market on the FanDuel Sportsbook, there’s an interesting dichotomy in the odds for AP Offensive Rookie of the Year Award between the Carolina Panthers’ first two picks from the 2023 NFL Draft. Quarterback and first-overall pick, Bryce Young has the second-best odds to win the award with his +430 line, while former Ole Miss wide receiver and second-round pick Jonathan Mingo is way down the board at +4200.

Parsing these lines, the reasoning for this becomes pretty clear: if Jonathan Mingo is having a good season, it will almost definitely be coming as a result of Bryce Young having a successful season. It would be very difficult for Mingo to win the award over Young in any season where both players remain healthy – he’d essentially need to be a yards-after-catch monster making highlight-reel plays independent from Young’s passing in every game to even stand a chance.

But if you think Bryce Young will play well in his rookie season, and believe in Jonathan Mingo’s talent and opportunity in 2023, you can take a look at Mingo’s +1200 odds to lead all rookies in receiving yards. While many of his contemporaries at the receiver position have much better cases to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year award than Mingo, his +1200 odds to lead all rookies in receiving yards are much closer to the pack than his +4200 odds to win Offensive Rookie of the Year. In fact, Mingo has the fifth-best odds in the class.

Who is Jonathan Mingo?

So why is that? A late riser in the pre-draft process, Mingo’s raw statistics while playing at Ole Miss don’t especially pop out. Across his first three seasons with the Rebels, he totaled just 61 catches for 897 yards and 7 touchdowns. By comparison, fellow rookies like Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jordan Addison had better receiving lines in a single season at various points in their collegiate careers.

Mingo’s final season looked better than his earlier ones, with the receiver catching 51 passes for 861 yards and 5 touchdowns. Again, the numbers aren’t flashy – he wasn’t quite able to lead his own team in either receptions or receiving yards as a senior. So how does a receiver with his production garner such attention from NFL teams?

In Mingo’s case, it was his ability to take over games with his size and speed. Mingo was one of the biggest winners at the NFL combine, where at 6’1” and 226 lbs, he blazed a 4.46-second 40-yard dash. He ran just 0.05 seconds slower than first-round pick Zay Flowers while weighing almost 45 pounds heavier than the new Baltimore Raven.

After beginning the pre-draft process as a fringe prospect, his combine performance drew the attention of NFL front offices. By the time the draft rolled around, he was one of the buzzier names among draft analysts, and even ranked as high up as the wide receiver 11 according to Arif Hassan’s Consensus Big Board rankings ahead of the draft.

The Panthers were excited enough about Mingo to take him with the 39th overall pick of the draft, and now he’ll join a relatively unproven receiver room with an opportunity to establish himself as their go-to guy.

Mingo’s ability to take over games came up throughout his collegiate career. He broke Ole Miss’ single-game receiving record with his 9-catch, 247-yard, 2-score game against Vanderbilt in 2022. As a true freshman, he caught 3 passes for 74 yards and a touchdown against Alabama’s fierce 2019 squad. He opened the 2020 season with 8 catches for 128 yards and 2 scores against Kentucky. The issue was that he couldn’t produce games like that more consistently, and there may have been a reason for that.

In his first two years, Mingo played alongside future second-round pick Elijah Moore at Ole Miss. During their two years of overlap, Moore was one of the most prolific receivers in all of college football. As the primary read in Lane Kiffin’s play-action-based system, Moore did not leave a lot of opportunities left to go around for the rest of his teammates. In 2019 – Mingo’s freshman year – Moore had over four times as many receiving yards as Ole Miss’ next-most productive receiver. The following year, Moore averaged an insane 149 receiving yards per game.

When Moore finally departed for the NFL in the 2021 draft, Mingo was primed to step into the spotlight. Through the team’s first three games, he started producing Moore-esque numbers, totaling 15 catches for 293 yards and 3 touchdowns. Unfortunately, he suffered a foot injury in practice heading into their fourth game that required multiple surgeries to correct. He did return that season but was very clearly limited.

Mingo as a Panther

We’ve covered his solid-not-flashy final season already, and can now look at how Mingo projects into the NFL. We know he’ll be catching passes from Bryce Young, one of the most prolific passers from the college game over the past two seasons. And we know he’ll join a receiving room in Carolina without an established pecking order.

Mingo will compete for targets with receivers like Adam Thielen, Terrace Marshall Jr., D.J. Chark, and Laviska Shenault. The Panthers don’t have a dominant pass-catching tight end to siphon away targets, and running back Miles Sanders is much closer to average as a pass-catcher than he is to former Panthers' target hog, Christian McCaffrey.

Every rookie receiver faces challenges adapting to the NFL and Mingo will be no different. But if he is deserving of the second-round draft capital he earned, he should have little problem finding the field in his rookie campaign. Thielen will turn 33 during the season and has seen his efficiency drop in three successive seasons. Marshall was an intriguing prospect coming out of LSU’s legendary 2019 campaign but hasn’t quite put things together in the NFL. Chark has had moments during his NFL tenure but could be best utilized as a part-time field stretcher given his size and speed.

The receivers that went ahead of Mingo in the draft – and that currently have more favorable odds to lead all rookies in regular season receiving yards – all have roadblocks sitting in their ways in the forms of Justin Jefferson, D.K. Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Mark Andrews, Keenan Allen, and more. Mingo should face the least resistance to playing time and targets of any of this year’s top wideouts.

So if Mingo gets on the field – and it looks like he will based on training camp reports – there’s little in the way of him becoming Bryce Young’s favorite target. In 2022, he had an average depth of target (aDOT) of 14.5 yards down the field, and added an average of 7.3 yards after the catch per reception. Of receivers in the 2023 draft class, only Marvin Mims and Quentin Johnston rivaled Mingo at adding yards after the catch down the field. Young had his most success in college when targeting speedy wideout Jameson Williams down the field and putting him in positions to add yards after the catch. On paper, Young and Mingo look capable of becoming a potent combo.

Conclusion

If you like Bryce Young’s chances of succeeding in the NFL, then there’s a good chance Jonathan Mingo thrives as Young’s top pass-catcher in their rookie season. Mingo is a legitimate longshot to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year award – and his +4200 odds reflect that – but he has a serious chance to lead all rookies in receiving yards in 2023. His +1200 odds make him a good value relative to his first-round peers to finish as the rookie receiving yards leader.

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.