It’s been four years since a defensive back won NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors, which has happened 11 times in the 52-year history of the award and just once over the last decade.
Sauce Gardner is determined to change that.
The Jets’ superstar cornerback has made no secret about his desire to be considered the best defender in the league, even hinting at his ambitions for an MVP campaign in 2023 after an award-winning run as a rookie in 2022.
Sure enough, Gardner is tied for the fourth-shortest odds (11/1) to win Defensive Player of the Year at BetMGM, and he’s one of just four defensive backs with shorter than 100/1 odds.
He’s the only one dealing at better than 40/1 in the months before the 2023 NFL season.
There’s no question Gardner has the talent and the tenacity to make a run at this award.
As a rookie, the former No. 4-overall pick led the league with 20 passes defensed and finished with 75 tackles and two interceptions for a defense that ranked in the top five in most key metrics.
His box-score stats hardly tell the whole story.
Among defenders with at least 500 coverage snaps, Gardner led all players in coverage grade (90.0), catch rate allowed (45.9 percent) and forced incompletion rate (27 percent), per Pro Football Focus.
He also ranked third in passer rating allowed (53.9) and surrendered just one touchdown on 74 targets all year.
All of that helped Gardner become the first cornerback in over four decades to earn first-team All-Pro honors as a rookie.
But it could also complicate his chances of winning DPOY in 2023.
Because of his elite ball skills along the boundary, quarterbacks were mostly scared to throw his way last season: Gardner ranked 20th in coverage snaps (646) but just 36th in targets (74) among all cornerbacks in 2022, and his two interceptions were tied for 27th among that group.
That poses a major issue for his DPOY candidacy.
Of the five defensive backs to win the award since 1995, four of them finished with at least six interceptions and at least one defensive touchdown.
The only exception was Bob Sanders (2007), whose 97 tackles and 3.5 sacks punctuated an all-around sterling résumé.
Typically, sack totals are the ultimate deciding factor in this market, which has been dominated by pass rushers in recent years.
Since Troy Polamalu won this award in 2010, 10 of 12 winners have been edge rushers or interior linemen, and each has posted at least 11 sacks in his DPOY-winning season.
Betting on the NFL?
- Read our expert guide on how to bet on the NFL
- Check out the best NFL betting sites
- Get the latest Super Bowl 2023 Odds.
- Get the BetMGM Bonus Code
That includes last year’s winner, Nick Bosa, whose 18.5 sacks led the league and helped him join that illustrious group of pass rushers to earn this award.
He’s dealing at the same odds as Gardner to repeat this season, while the top three betting options — Micah Parsons (+650), Myles Garrett (+700) and T.J. Watt (+750) — all have double-digit sack upside in 2023.
All of this is to say nothing of the natural volatility at the cornerback position, which is another concern for Gardner’s outlook in this race.
Consider the case of A.J. Terrell, who entered last season as arguably the best young corner in football after a Gardner-like run in 2021.
Terrell looked like an entirely different player in 2022, finishing with zero interceptions and more touchdowns allowed (nine) than passes broken up (eight).
We’ve seen similar things happen to Jaire Alexander, Xavien Howard, Marshon Lattimore and just about every other star cornerback who’s entered the league over the last decade.
Yes, Gardner’s rookie season outpaced what we’ve seen from any of those guys, but they serve as a cautionary tale to place too much stock in one special season from a young corner.
So before you lay the short price on Gardner, consider that his brilliance in pass coverage doesn’t guarantee a fair shake in the DPOY race, and it’ll take even more than he showed as a rookie to change that.