Former Michigan quarterback JJ McCarthy is slipping down the odds board despite still being among the favorites to go No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft.
While McCarthy is still in the hunt for those spots, according to oddsmakers, McCarthy's chances to be a top 5 pick have fallen.
This slippage, of course, is relative. A few months ago, the thought of McCarthy going in the top 5 was a longshot.
But as the draft has neared — and the Cardinals made clear their willingness to move down from the No. 4 overall pick — the likelihood that a team would reach up to grab the quarterback for the defending national champions increased substantially.
McCarthy opened as a roughly -120 favorite to be a top 5 pick, with those odds falling as low as -175 over the weekend.
Now, at FanDuel, his odds of being a top 5 pick are -148. It's a small correction on the aggregate — the difference between -175 and -148 in implied probability is 3% — but it's indicative that the market at large isn't completely sold that a team will sell out and trade up to the No. 4 or No. 5 slots and pay a premium for a quarterback with iffy tangibles.
And in the individual odds markets, his odds have fallen to a similar degree, too.
While he's still the second favorite to clock in at No. 4 at +400 — behind Marvin Harrison Jr. at -240 — those odds are down from a high of roughly +250.
McCarthy had been as low as +800 to go No. 2 overall. Now he's +1000.
And at No. 3, he's the third-best favorite at +450, a far cry from the peak of his odds over the weekend.
At No. 5 overall, his odds are even worse, clocking in behind LSU wide receiver Malik Nabers, Harrison Jr., and Notre Dame offensive tackle Joe Alt.
McCarthy's college coach Jim Harbaugh now runs the show for the owners of the No. 5 pick, the Los Angeles Chargers, but the team is set up with a franchise quarterback in Justin Herbert.
These incentive structures have made Harbaugh's positionality interesting here. He's paid lip service in saying that McCarthy is the best quarterback in the draft — a draft that has three QBs rated higher on the majority of draft boards.
But Harbaugh is more than incentivized to pay that lip service on multiple levels. Not only does Harbaugh need to stand by his former guys — loyalty is as important a coaching trait as anything else, one that future players will take into consideration — but gassing up McCarthy to colleagues around the league may be an attempt to inflate the value of the No. 5 pick for a trade down.
On account of this league chatter, there's been hysteria involving a potential trade up to nab McCarthy. But, perhaps it's all smoke and mirrors in an attempt to induce a bidding war for a cheap prospect in the sport's most important position.
