We are currently in the middle of doing our annual NFL SportsLine futures betting draft (look for that article at a later date), and while I won’t get into the weeds of exactly what’s going on with that draft, the gist is we do a snake draft to select various win totals and award winners, with whoever ends up “making” the most taking home everyone’s entry fee. Bet NFL futures at DraftKings and get $150 in bonus bets instantly after a $5+ wager:
Now, because I am in that draft, anyone who knows me or has read my work could probably correctly discern that I was almost guaranteed to select someone for a category that does not even exist as part of the draft. And sure enough, I did just that! Stupid me!
But the good news is it led me to finding a couple of futures bets I think we should all responsibly pounce on now before the NFL betting value is completely sucked out of them. Specifically, I’m looking at the Comeback Player of the Year Award.
Let’s start with the shorter number and get to a longshot I really like after that. Sign up for FanDuel to get up to $1,000 in Bet Reset Tokens when placing NFL futures bets:
Aaron Donald (+900 DraftKings)
The two most important things to think about when wagering your hard-earned money on NFL awards futures are A, the criteria of the award, and B, the people voting on the award. This applies to every single one of the trophies handed out at NFL Honors, but CPOY is especially difficult to wrangle.
A few years ago, Joe Flacco won the award despite not actually coming back from anything other than unemployement. Because Flacco beat out Damar Hamlin, someone at the NFL or the Associated Press got angry and decided to ask voters to “consider the spirit” of the award, which is supposed to be coming back from hardship of some kind. Basically, it should go to someone who came back from injury.
This is a problem for a wager on Aaron Donald because Donald is not coming back from injury. In fact, Donald hasn’t even officially come back yet — he’s still retired.
The latter is why we’re still getting a good price on him. If he does come back, that price will drop.
And perhaps we should say when he does come back, because it’s looking increasingly likely that he returns to the Rams to team up with Myles Garrett and ruin 17 Sundays for various offensive linemen. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported on NBC during last week’s Hall of Fame game that he believes Donald could return as soon as this weekend, specifically mentioning Friday.
Regardless, Florio believes it’s all but done at this point, with the Rams simply needing to figure out how to get Donald the requisite amount of cash from ownership to pay him his 2026 salary. That will not be a sticking point for a franchise that’s all-in on this season as it tries to win a second Super Bowl with Matthew Stafford at quarterback.
As to the first point about how the award is handled, I will concede it is somewhat of a concern. The AP wants the voters to lean towards someone who has returned from some kind of hardship, and Donald does not qualify in that sense. There are several big-name players — notably Patrick Mahomes and Jayden Daniels — would could nuke this wager with strong seasons that result in voters giving them a nod, much in the same way Joe Burrow won for the second time in 2024.
But what is more comeback than leaving football for several years and returning to play at a hyper-dominant level? We probably won’t get a full game’s worth of snaps from Donald out of the gate, which is fine. The Rams are going to ramp him up and will want him to play the entire season. If he does that and is remotely close to his old self on a top-five defense, I think there will be a strong push to get Donald the award, particularly if the Rams are as good as everyone expects them to be.
At 9-1 at DraftKings Sportsbook, I’m willing to take that chance for .5 units. Sign up with the BetMGM bonus code CBSSPORTS and get bonus bets when placing bets on the NFL:
Tank Dell (+6000, FanDuel)
This is more of a “traditional” CPOY wager. Dell is a more fragile case because he’s not a quarterback who can control how he’s perceived over the course of a season. If C.J. Stroud stinks or the Texans are terrible on offense, Dell might not end up having a huge year and we could get burned here.
But the price here at FanDuel Sportsbook is too good to ignore, especially with the positive reports coming out of Texans camp about Dell’s progress. Dell is currently listed as the WR5 on the Texans depth chart, but he was finally back at training camp doing full reps this week.
The Texans beefed up their reeceiving corps last year, so there’s more competition to deal with. But do you know why they beefed up their receiving corps? Part of the reason was Dell seemed unlikely to be on the field in 2025, which he wasn’t. He burst on the scene as a rookie in 2023 and was continuing to improve in his second year before suffering one of the more brutal NFL injuries in recent memory in Week 16 of the 2024 season.
It cost him all of 2025 and if he comes back and is an important factor for Stroud and this passing game, the nature of the injury, the prolonged absence and his return would be cookie cutter stuff for this award.
This price won’t stick around long if Dell gets on the field and starts to produce during training camp.
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