With two days until the 2023 NFL Draft begins, there is a general consensus that Bryce Young will be the first overall pick of the Carolina Panthers after they traded up with the Bears to land the top spot last month.
After months of debate over who is the top quarterback in this year’s class, things have settled out on Young being the prohibitive favorite (-1600) to hear his name called first on Thursday night. C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson, and Will Levis all expect to hear their names called early as well, but there’s a lot of variance on what order and what teams will be taking them.
On Tuesday morning, however, the odds market began shifting rather dramatically in favor of Levis, as the former Kentucky Wildcat vaulted Stroud and Richardson to having the second-best odds to go first overall. The reason for that leap from +4000 to +400 (now +500 at DraftKings)? A Reddit post about Levis allegedly telling people he was going first.
Someone on Reddit posted Will Levis is ‘telling friends and family Carolina will in fact take him’ as the No. 1 pick…
His odds to be the first pick jumped from +4000 to +400 in the last hour @DKSportsbook
pic.twitter.com/RwuizOJidy
— br_betting (@br_betting) April 25, 2023
While this all could be noise, many sports bettors will remember a similar thing happening prior to last year’s NBA Draft, when newsbreakers insisted Jabari Smith Jr. was going to go first, while bettors hammered Paolo Banchero’s odds. The bettors, in that case, turned out to be right and cashed in big time when the Magic took Banchero. We’ll find out in a couple of days if this is a smokescreen or a real fire, but a number of folks jumped along for the ride to try and cash in again on some late draft steam.