NFL DPOY Odds 2026: The Pass-Rusher's Award, And How To Bet It
The NFL Defensive Player of the Year race looks wide open every August, and it almost never is. For 15 years it has been one thing wearing a lot of different jerseys: a guy who gets to the quarterback. Understand that, and the NFL DPOY odds 2026 board stops looking like a list of 20-plus defenders and starts looking like a two-tier market: a favorite the whole country already knows, and a soft middle where the actual value hides.
That favorite is Myles Garrett, and his story is the one driving the market this year. He set a single-season sack record in 2025, won his second DPOY, and then got traded from Cleveland to the Los Angeles Rams in June. He is now the headliner on what a lot of people think is the most dangerous roster in football. The books noticed. The question this piece answers is not "is Garrett good," it is "at his price, is he the bet, or is the pass-rusher bias telling you to buy the same trait a tier cheaper?"
In Summary
- The Favorite: Myles Garrett (LA Rams) sits around +400, shortened from roughly +600 after the June trade to Los Angeles.
- The Bias: 12 of the last 16 DPOYs were pass-rush disruptors. Only four were not pass rushers, and no defensive back has ever won it twice.
- The Lean: the winner almost certainly comes from the top of this board, so I would rather buy a pass rusher at +750 to +1400 than pay +400 for the chalk, where the futures hold eats most of your edge.
- The Tool: the OddsShopper odds screen compares the DPOY number across 100+ books and strips the vig so you take the true best price on whichever edge rusher you land on. Try it free for 7 days, then DPOYEDGE20 for 20% off.
What The DPOY Award Actually Rewards
If you are new to season-long awards markets, start with the mechanics in our how to bet on NFL guide, because DPOY is a futures bet, not a weekly one. You are pricing a full-season outcome in July and living with it until January.
Here is the part the casual market underrates: this award is a sack-and-pressure popularity contest with a narrative chaser. The voters, a national panel of writers, reward the player whose season becomes a story, and in the modern NFL that story is almost always a double-digit-sack edge rusher on a good defense. Coverage is harder to see on a highlight and harder to measure on a stat sheet. A strip-sack is a story you can point at.
This is why the board bunches the way it does. Every name near the top gets after the passer, and the field beyond them thins out fast.
The Base Rates: A Pass-Rusher's Award
Look at who has actually won it. Here are the AP Defensive Player of the Year winners from 2010 through 2025.
| Season | Winner | Team | Position |
|---|
| 2010 | Troy Polamalu | Steelers | Safety |
| 2011 | Terrell Suggs | Ravens | Edge |
| 2012 | J.J. Watt | Texans | Edge |
| 2013 | Luke Kuechly | Panthers | Off-ball LB |
| 2014 | J.J. Watt | Texans | Edge |
| 2015 | J.J. Watt | Texans | Edge |
| 2016 | Khalil Mack | Raiders | Edge |
| 2017 | Aaron Donald | Rams | Interior DL |
| 2018 | Aaron Donald | Rams | Interior DL |
| 2019 | Stephon Gilmore | Patriots | Cornerback |
| 2020 | Aaron Donald | Rams | Interior DL |
| 2021 | T.J. Watt | Steelers | Edge |
| 2022 | Nick Bosa | 49ers | Edge |
| 2023 | Myles Garrett | Browns | Edge |
| 2024 | Patrick Surtain II | Broncos | Cornerback |
| 2025 | Myles Garrett | Browns | Edge |
Count the pass-rush disruptors, meaning the edge rushers plus Aaron Donald's interior rush, and you get 12 of 16 seasons. The other four were the only non-pass-rush winners of the whole stretch: Polamalu, Kuechly, Gilmore, and Surtain. Three of those four were defensive backs, and here is the number that should shape every futures ticket you write on a corner or safety this year: no defensive back has ever won this award more than once. Surtain won it in 2024. History says do not expect the encore.
So before you even look at a price, the pool is basically "which pass rusher." That single fact is the whole reason a DPOY board is beatable. When 12 of 16 winners share one job description, you are not handicapping a defense, you are handicapping a sack title.
The Sack Title Is The Tell
Which brings the last table row back into focus. Garrett did not just win in 2025, he broke the single-season sack record with 23. That is the profile: the DPOY almost always leads or nearly leads the league in sacks, because the sack is the stat the award is quietly built on. T.J. Watt won 2021 off a 22.5-sack season that tied the old record. Run down the recent winners and the pattern repeats: the man at or near the top of the league sack list is the one holding the trophy. The through-line is the number in the sack column.
That gives you a cleaner way to shop the board than "who is the best defender." Ask instead: who has a realistic path to 16-plus sacks on a defense that will be on national TV in December? Answer that, and you have your short list. Everything else on the board is a name the market is charging you for.
The Board: 2026 NFL DPOY Odds
Here is a representative look at the market as of mid-July. Futures prices move and vary by book, so treat these as the shape of the board, not a locked quote. The same DPOY ticket rarely carries the identical price at DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars, and on a middle-tier name the gap between the best and worst number is often wide enough to swing your entire edge. That is exactly why you never bet the first number you see.
| Player | Team | Odds |
|---|
| Myles Garrett | LA Rams | +400 |
| Will Anderson Jr. | Texans | +750 |
| Aidan Hutchinson | Lions | +1000 |
| Maxx Crosby | Raiders | +1400 |
| Nik Bonitto | Broncos | +1400 |
| T.J. Watt | Steelers | +2500 |
| Patrick Surtain II | Broncos | +2500 |
| Jalen Carter | Eagles | +2500 |
Notice the top of the board is a wall of edge rushers, exactly what the base rates predict. The lone cornerback, Surtain, sits at +2500 with the "no DB repeats" tax already partly baked in. Two names you will see quoted elsewhere deserve an asterisk: Micah Parsons, now in Green Bay, is a top-five talent but is working back from a torn ACL suffered in December, so any short number on him is buying a health question. And Jared Verse, the young Ram who went to Cleveland in the Garrett deal, changes both his price and his situation with the move. The one name I keep coming back to is Will Anderson Jr. at +750, and I will get to why. First, the math on the favorite.
Is Garrett Worth +400? Run The Numbers
This is where an intermediate bettor separates from the crowd, and it is the same de-vig work OddsShopper does on every market automatically. Turn the prices into implied probability with 100 / (odds + 100):
- Garrett +400 implies 20.0%
- Anderson +750 implies 11.8%
- Hutchinson +1000 implies 9.1%
- Crosby +1400 implies 6.7%
Add just those four and you are already at 47.6%, and the full 20-plus-name board pushes the total implied probability well past 100%. That overage is the book's hold, and on award futures it is steep, often 30% or more across the field. It means the sticker prices are inflated: Garrett's true shot is meaningfully lower than the 20% his +400 implies once you strip the vig out.
Now weigh that against the history. Back-to-back DPOY seasons are rare. Only J.J. Watt (2014-2015) and Aaron Donald (2017-2018) have done it in this era, and Garrett is trying to join them while learning a new defense in a new city. A repeat would be his third DPOY and his first back-to-back. It is possible, he is the best pure pass rusher alive, but +400 is asking you to pay full retail on the one outcome the market is most in love with, usually the worst value on any futures board. If the number on your preferred name is not there, the right move is to pass and wait, not to talk yourself onto the chalk.
The de-vig work is the edge. OddsShopper scans 100+ sportsbooks, strips the vig, and shows you the true price on every DPOY name so you never take an inflated number. Try it free for 7 days, then use code DPOYEDGE20 for 20% off OS Pro. Start your free trial
Where The Value Sits: Buy The Bias, Not The Name
The pass-rusher bias tells you the winner comes from the top six on that board. The hold tells you paying +400 for it is a bad way to collect. Put those together and the play is clear: buy the same trait one tier down, where a 16-sack season pays you +750 to +1400 instead of +400.
My favorite of that group is Will Anderson Jr. at +750. He is the ascending edge on a Houston defense that has quietly become one of the league's best fronts, he is squarely in his prime, and he has the exact profile, a young high-motor rusher whose sack total is trending up, that the voters have handed this award to over and over. At +750 you are getting nearly double Garrett's price on a player with a very live path to the sack title.
If you want a second dart, Aidan Hutchinson at +1000 is the bet on health and hype. He was on a DPOY pace before a serious leg injury cut his 2024 short, and a fully healthy Hutchinson on a Lions defense that gets prime-time reps is precisely the "story" this award chases. Nik Bonitto at +1400 is the deeper stab if you want a true longshot with real sack upside.
None of that fades the pass-rusher thesis, it leans into it. The bias is real, Garrett is the deserving favorite, and his trade is the storyline of the offseason. I just think the smart ticket is the edge rusher the market has not fallen in love with yet. That gap, not the narrative, is the bet.
How To Actually Place It
A few pieces of futures craft, assuming you already know the basics:
- Shop Every Book. DPOY prices vary wildly, a +750 at one shop is +900 at another, and on a longshot that difference is your whole margin. Pull up live NFL odds, let the odds screen and Portfolio EV surface the best available number, and take it every time.
- Bet The Riser Before The Narrative Catches Up. This is a voter-driven award, and voters chase a sack total that is climbing. An ascending name like Anderson gets repriced fast the moment his sack count spikes in October, quicker than a game line would move on a comparable box score, so the value is in buying him before the story forms, not after.
- Think In CLV. If you take Anderson at +750 and he is +450 by Week 6, you already won the bet in the only way that matters long-term, even before the trophy is handed out.
- Sack Props Are The Weekly Cousin. If a season-long ticket is too slow for you, the same read plays out in weekly NFL player props, where a hot edge rusher's sack and tackle numbers are live every Sunday.
The Bottom Line
DPOY is not a mystery, it is a sack title with a narrative bonus, and the last 16 winners prove it. That makes Garrett the right favorite and a genuinely great player to build the storyline around. It also makes +400 the price you avoid, because the pass-rusher bias that crowns him also crowns the guy at +750 more than often enough to bet. Handicap the sack leaderboard, buy the trait a tier down, shop the number, and let the field chase the biggest name.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do NFL Defensive Player of the Year odds work?
DPOY is a season-long futures market. You bet a player in July or August at a fixed price, and the ticket cashes only if he wins the award in January or February. Because the field is 20-plus deep, the book's hold is large, so shopping for the best number on your pick matters more than on a normal game line.
Why is Myles Garrett the 2026 DPOY favorite?
He won the award in 2025 with a record 23 sacks, he is the best pure pass rusher in the league, and his June trade to the Rams put him on a Super Bowl contender that will get heavy national attention. His odds shortened from about +600 to +400 on the trade news alone.
Has a defensive back ever won DPOY twice?
No. Every multiple-time winner has been a pass rusher or interior lineman. Coverage players have won it only four times since 2010, and none has ever repeated, which is why a corner or safety is a tough futures bet no matter how good the season looks.
When should you bet DPOY futures?
Bet an ascending pass rusher early, before a strong start shortens his price, and wait on the established favorite, whose number rarely gets better and often drifts. The goal is to beat the closing line on your side, not just to sweat the trophy.
Start Finding The Better Number
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