Oddsmakers have Russell Wilson at third-best odds to win 2020 NFL MVP

Russell Wilson made a lot of hay this summer by the mere fact that he has never received an MVP vote. Not a single, tiny little vote.

The simmer began when we were all sitting at home not watching any pro sports in April, and cooked throughout summer until boiling over around the release of the NFL top 100.

Notice how I just discussed Russell Wilson and made three cooking references in the same paragraph.

Anyway, chances are that may change this year, if Las Vegas is to be believed.

This is not extraordinarily new information, but I stumbled across the projections for 2020 MVP happening among the gamblers and found it interesting alongside the woes of the Seattle Seahawks’ beloved quarterback.

From left to right those are FanDuel, Points Bet and Playbook Sugarhouse. There are others not pictured, point being across major betters Russell Wilson is the consensus third likeliest candidate for MVP this year. In a couple of instances, he is tied with or even ahead of Lamar Jackson, but the top three quarterbacks are a meaningful gap ahead of anyone else.

It would be interesting, as Lamar Jackson won for just the second unanimous MVP in NFL history last year, whether a second or third place finish for Wilson would actually net any votes.

Russell Wilson’s career notoriety has been a unique journey. He seems to take the path of delayed escalation. That is, he’s not talked about, some would say underrated, until that very fact becomes noticed and discussed ad nauseum until he is the subject of no small emotional debate about something he may or not have deserved by now.

This is no surprise among native Seattle fans, but the examples range from his role actually played in the Super Bowl victory, why national media referred to him as a game manager some six years into his career, and the aforementioned MVP conversation. There’s a few more, but Russell tends to play so well that the fact that he hasn’t gained national attention in “X” seems to, within a year or so, gain him fantastical amount of attention in “X”.

Not saying that’s what Vegas is doing, obviously, as money is king. But might there be a window this year for that cheeky undersized game manager to swindle some votes from a more deserving candidate?