How many of you picked Seattle vs. New England for the Super Bowl at the beginning of the season? If you said you did, you are lying. While this matchup was unexpected at the start of the season, it should be a thriller with two extremely talented and well-coached teams colliding for a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX. For those placing prop bets or playing daily fantasy, this is a great Super Bowl as all offensive assets for both sides have been logging full practices all week. Only the Quarterbacks enter the game with notable injuries worth discussing, and I’ll cover them both below.
Drake Maye
Injury: Right shoulder
Analysis: Maye apparently entered the AFC championship game with a mild shoulder injury and aggravated it after landing hard. Maye did not miss a play, delivered some strikes down the field, and threw a nasty stiff arm after the apparent injury. Maye has been full-go in practice this week, and there are no functional limitations on his game or his expected throwing power or accuracy. To pump more confidence into prop bets favoring Maye or his pass catchers, Quarterbacks average no drop-off in fantasy production after a shoulder injury.
If New England’s offensive line can keep Maye protected, his shoulder will not be an issue. The potential risk is purely tied to the fact that the presence of an injury reduces the threshold of impact needed to generate another injury. The concern is if Maye takes a bad hit to the shoulder, things could get stirred up. But that is a risk that prop bettors should not fear heading into the Super Bowl.
Sam Darnold
Injury: Oblique strain
Analysis: Darnold looked sharp in the NFC championship and clearly had the power to make all of the throws. With no reported setbacks and two more weeks to rehab, expect his obliques to have healed even more to a point where strength and power ar nearly normal. At this point, there is no expectation for any performance decline, any loss of throwing power or accuracy, or any reason to blame the oblique for a bad game, UNLESS, it gets re-injured.
The tricky thing about an oblique injury is that the Quarterback cannot hide it, cannot move his body in a way that avoids a powerful oblique contraction, and external padding, bracing, etc., really does not make any difference. From a daily fantasy or prop bet standpoint, Darnold’s situation is similar to Maye’s. If they stay clean, they should play well, but they are at an elevated re-injury risk compared to if these injuries never happened.