Yahoo Finance NFL playoffs betting: One bettor placed a Super Bowl MVP bet on ... John Wolford?
John Wolford won’t play for the Los Angeles Rams this week, having been ruled out with an injury.
The Rams are 6.5-point underdogs against the Green Bay Packers this week and even if they win, they’d have to beat the New Orleans Saints or Tampa Bay Buccaneers to make it to the Super Bowl.
That didn’t dissuade one bettor from putting a couple hundred bucks at BetMGM on Wolford, who has started and finished one game in his NFL career, to win Super Bowl MVP at 500-to-1 odds.
Check this out:
One bettor just placed a $200 bet on John Wolford to be Super Bowl MVP at +50000 🏆
The payout? $100,000. pic.twitter.com/E3sWFmrqFI— BetMGM 🦁 (@BetMGM) January 14, 2021
That seems a bit crazy on the surface, but it might end up being rather brilliant. And profitable.
John Wolford for Super Bowl MVP?
Let’s follow the line of thinking on betting Wolford to win Super Bowl MVP. It does make some sense, given the long odds.
Like most other awards, voters default to betting on quarterbacks. Quarterbacks have won MVP in 30 of 54 Super Bowls including 10 of the last 14. You always have a chance when you bet on a quarterback for practically any award that is voted on. Voters love quarterbacks. Betting on any other position is generally a waste.
We’re down to eight teams in these NFL playoffs, so you’d mostly think that you could narrow down the best Super Bowl MVP bets to eight players. But the Rams might be a special case.
Rams starter Jared Goff is already dealing with a broken thumb that needed to be surgically repaired on Dec. 28. He didn’t look healthy in a Rams win over the Seahawks in the wild-card round. There’s a risk of injuring it again, or a new injury. It’s easier to see Wolford playing again than it is for any of the other seven backup quarterbacks alive in the playoffs.
It’s a bit of a narrow runway to land on: The Rams continuing to win this weekend with Goff and making a Super Bowl, but something happening between now and the Super Bowl that would lead to Wolford being the Rams’ primary quarterback in a championship win.
But that’s why there’s a potential $100,000 payout on a $200 bet.
Wolford is out this week
If all the other dots connect — the Rams and their strong defense winning a Super Bowl, Wolford coming back from injury and finding a path to playing time in the Super Bowl and playing well — Wolford will have the narrative part of Super Bowl MVP on his side.
Wolford was a fun Week 17 story. The former Alliance of American Football standout threw his first NFL passes replacing Goff, and played pretty well helping the Rams to a win that clinched a playoff spot. With Goff still healing Wolford got the start in the wild-card playoff game, but was knocked out of the game with an injury on a hit by Jamal Adams.
If Wolford returns from an injury that was so bad he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance during a game and saves the Rams in a Super Bowl because Goff can’t play for some reason, it’ll be a story for the ages.
An even crazier part of the story would come if a bettor won six figures on a bet that relied on a currently injured backup quarterback winning Super Bowl MVP.
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