Shedeur Sanders, Who Fell to 5th Round, Owns 2nd-Shortest NFL MVP Odds Among Rookies

C Jackson Cowart

Last Updated: April 29, 2025 3:51 PM EDT • 3 min 27 sec read. Twitter link Google News Link

Shedeur Sanders NFL MVP Odds: Browns QB Ranks 2nd Among Rookies to Win Award — Pictured: Colorado Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders (2) warms up. Photo by Christopher Hanewinckel / Imagn Images.

Shedeur Sanders was the 144th player taken in the 2025 NFL Draft, but he still has the second-shortest NFL MVP odds among all rookies after his historic draft slide.

Sanders opened with +15000 odds to win NFL MVP following the draft, which saw him plummet to the fifth round in one of the biggest NFL draft slides of all time. The Cleveland Browns finally ended his three-day wait - but only after drafting another quarterback (Dillon Gabriel) ahead of him in the third round.

Nevertheless, Sanders still boasts some of the shortest NFL MVP odds of anyone in the 2025 draft class ... even if he's yet to earn a starting job.

📊 Shedeur Sanders NFL MVP odds

Here's a look at the latest NFL MVP odds at DraftKings for this year's rookie class, including where Sanders ranks among first-year players:

Cam Ward, QB, Titans (+10000)
Shedeur Sanders, QB, Browns (+15000)
Travis Hunter, WR/CB, Jaguars (+20000)
Abdul Carter, EDGE, Giants (+50000)
Jalen Milroe, QB, Seahawks (+50000)
Will Johnson, CB, Cardinals (+50000)
Mason Graham, DT, Browns (+80000)
Tetairoa McMillan, WR, Panthers (+80000)

Sanders opened as the early favorite to be the No. 1 pick back in April 2024. And while that clearly never came to fruition, it appears one of our best sports betting sites is hedging its bets against a potential MVP run from the former Colorado star.

Only Cam Ward, the actual No. 1 pick to the Tennessee Titans, has shorter odds than Sanders at DraftKings in the days following his historic draft tumble. He also has +15000 odds at Caesars, while his best odds are +42000 via FanDuel.

For context, Sanders has the same MVP odds at DraftKings as Las Vegas Raiders QB Geno Smith and shorter odds than New York Jets QB Justin Fields - both of whom have starting jobs locked up heading into the 2025 season.

Sanders, on the other hand, is still the underdog by the latest Browns starting QB odds. He's trailing Kenny Pickett, whom the team traded for in the offseason, and trading just ahead of Joe Flacco and Gabriel for the starting QB role.

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🏆 Has a rookie ever won NFL MVP?

Jim Brown won NFL MVP honors as a rookie in 1957, when he led the league with 942 rushing yards (78.5 YPG) and nine touchdowns in 12 games. He earned 14 of 36 possible votes to beat Y.A. Tittle for the award.

Brown is the only rookie to ever win the NFL MVP award, though 15 other players have received votes for the award in their rookie season. Only three of them were quarterbacks: Dan Marino (1983), C.J. Stroud (2023), and Jayden Daniels (2024).

It had been 15 years since a rookie earned an MVP vote until Stroud burst onto the scene two years ago - winning NFL Offensive Player of the Year in near-unanimous fashion and finishing ninth in MVP voting.

Daniels did the same last year with a seventh-place MVP finish en route to near-unanimous OROY honors. So, clearly, there's a path ahead for the right rookie QB to break through and make history in today's pass-happy environment.

🤔 Can Shedeur Sanders win NFL MVP in 2025?

Make no mistake: there's a big difference between Sanders ranking among the rookie leaders in MVP odds and actually having a chance to win the award.

As mentioned above, only three quarterbacks have ever garnered a single vote in the MVP race, and all three of them posted historic seasons in their debut campaign. Marino made the Pro Bowl as a rookie despite starting just nine games, while Stroud and Daniels wowed all year long as full-time starters.

Sanders has a much tougher path ahead. Even if he beats out Pickett, Flacco, and Gabriel for the starting job - which he has a roughly 30% chance to do, according to our odds converter - he'd need to post MVP-level production for an offense that ranked 32nd in scoring (15.2 PPG) last year.

The odds are clearly stacked against Sanders, who remains a 25/1 long shot by the latest NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year odds. That alone speaks to how ridiculous it is to rank him among the rookie leaders in MVP odds.

But hey, the former FCS star has proved the doubters wrong before. And if he does make history by winning MVP in his rookie season, a $10 bet at FanDuel would return a $4,210 profit. Never say never?

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Written By:
C Jackson Cowart

C Jackson Cowart is a publishing editor and lead writer for Sportsbook Review. An award-winning writer, reporter, and editor with a decade of sports media experience, "C-Jax" has worked with ESPN, Forbes, theScore, and various daily newspapers before joining the Sportsbook Review team. He's a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina, where he served as a beat writer for the Tar Heels' championship run through the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 2017. Jackson has spent the last five years covering sports betting as a predictive analyst, features writer, and industry reporter. Since joining the team in 2023, he's played a key role in Sportsbook Review's coverage of the Super Bowl, March Madness, and NBA playoffs while serving as the lead writer for the growing WNBA and NASCAR betting scenes. Though he's cashed some big bets over the years -- including Lamar Jackson to win MVP (twice) -- he's still haunted by enough second-place bet slips to wallpaper his home office. While Jackson is a committed "process over results" bettor with a keen eye for advanced stats and subtle bias in futures markets, he also embraces sports betting as a vehicle for entertainment and personal investment. He's written about everything from hot dogs to groundhogs and still hasn't forgiven his "inside source" for a sabotaged bet on the Gatorade color in Super Bowl LV.