FanDuel odds: Giants are the NFL’s longest shot

Breaking down the Giants’ team wagers on offer

Welcome to the New York Giants betting angle, offseason edition! Each week during the NFL season, I write a betting column right here at Big Blue View where I offer up my three favorite wagers for that week’s Giants game. Well, NFL bets aren’t just for the regular season. There are lots of wagers on offer during the offseason too. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, but it’s definitely a thing. Today I’m going to dive into the off-season wagers that you can make on the Giants as a team. I’ll look at individual player props in a later column. Yup, those are available too.

About a week ago, FanDuel published its first slate of team wagers for the 2025-26 season. For each NFL team, there are odds to win the Division, the Conference, and the Super Bowl, and an over/under (O/U) win total available for wagering.

It’s too early for this, I hear you scream. After all, the 2025 NFL Draft hasn’t happened yet, and we don’t know each team’s schedule. Well, that’s true, but these odds came out after all of the big free agents had signed (sorry Aaron Rodgers, you just aren’t that big any more), and with full knowledge of each team’s list of opponents, if not the specific schedule.

Part of the fun of wagering on this stuff early is the incomplete information, which can offer some good value to savvy players. Or so the logic goes. While the lines haven’t moved yet, the odds have, as money has poured in on some of the wagers on offer. More on that in a minute.

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Not surprisingly, as of Friday, April 4, the Giants have THE longest odds on the board for winning their division (+2,800), their conference (+10,000), and the Super Bowl (+20,000), and are tied for the lowest O/U win total posted (5.5). Sheesh. I’m not going to spend much time on these long-shot wagers. They’re all probably worth a small sprinkle because of the giant payouts (no pun intended), and especially if you’re a fan of the team. I wouldn’t waste more than a couple of bucks on any of them, though. Can I fault you for plunking down five bucks on the Giants to win the Super Bowl? Nope. $5 to win $10,000 is decent value — better odds than a lottery ticket, which is basically what that bet is.

The wager I want to focus on is the 5.5 O/U win total. FanDuel has the Giants rated as the NFL’s worst team, and early action has already pushed the under on that bet down to -150, while the over sits at +125. This line will likely fall to 4.5 if this trend continues. So how are we feeling about that 5.5 O/U? Let’s dive in.

Last season, the Giants won three games, which tied for the lowest win total in the league. In order to hit the over on 5.5 wins, they need to at least double their win total from last season. That’s hard when you win, say six or seven games. When you win only three? Not much of a task. So can they improve enough to get there? Let’s look at some pros and cons.

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PROS

1. Perhaps the biggest contributor to the Giants’ 3-14 record last season was abysmal quarterback play, and while nobody should confuse Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston, or any rookie the team drafts in the first or second round with the NFL’s upper echelon of QBs, the QB play should be more competent and should help the team to avoid getting blown out so regularly. The Giants lost five games last season by 20+ points. Steadier QB play should keep them in more games this year.

2. The Giants came away with a very good draft class last season, and it wasn’t just Malik Nabers. GM Joe Schoen and his staff did a good job of identifying talent that contributed in Year 1 throughout the draft, and those players now have a year under their belts and should continue to improve. On top of that, the Giants are once again picking early – the one benefit of a terrible season. They have the third pick and should be able to add some more impact players in a draft that isn’t as strong as the 2024 draft, but has depth at some key positions that the team needs to address.

3. Brian Daboll and Schoen are gone if the team doesn’t show meaningful improvement. Their jobs are on the line. This could cut both ways, but I think you’re going to see improved preparation, focus, and determination from Big Blue this season, with the result that they’ll be in more games. Having fewer injuries to key players would also help.

4. While the Giants’ schedule is going to be tough (see below), they aren’t likely to be one of those marquee teams that has a lot of games in prime time, or that faces three games in 11 days, or other detrimental scheduling that the top teams often face.

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

CONS

1. The Giants have a below-average roster and play in a very tough division. This is a team that has the third pick in April’s draft for a reason, a year being almost as bad and drafting sixth. The Giants are in the middle of a lengthy down cycle (2022 notwithstanding), and it’s not entirely clear if last season was where they bottomed out. Sorry to say, this isn’t a good team right now.

2. The schedule isn’t going to be the Giants’ friend. We don’t know the specifics, but we do know the list of opponents and it’s not pretty, even with a so-called “4^th place schedule” on tap. Believe it or not, the Giants have the league’s hardest strength-of-schedule, based on the 2024 winning percentage of its 2025 opponents (.574%). The NFC East plays the NFC North and NFC West this season. So, in addition to having to play two games against the Super Bowl Champions, the NFC runner-up, and Dallas (who has beaten the Giants 15 of the last 16 times they’ve played, including the last eight), the Giants will play eight games against teams from the league’s two strongest divisions. Both divisions put three teams in the playoffs last season, and based on the FanDuel O/U win totals, are the two best divisions. That leaves three games against other last place teams from last season: The Panthers, the Patriots, and…the 49ers!?! Yes, the 49ers, who went to the Super Bowl in 2023 and have an O/U win total of 10.5 this season, are one of New York’s rewards for finishing last in the NFC East in 2024.

3. Even with the improvements at quarterback, the Giants are still at the bottom of their division and near the bottom of the conference in terms of the quality of their QBs. Wilson and the Steelers struggled down the stretch (they didn’t break 20 points in any of their last five games, all losses) and made a quick playoff exit. And while Jameis Winston is fun for fantasy football, he turns the ball over a lot and has never been a consistent winner.

So where does this leave us? I’d love to see the Giants have a nice bounce-back season and I do think the product will be better in 2025. But that brutally hard schedule is going to make it very tough to get to six wins. It won’t surprise me if the Giants aren’t favored in more than one or two games all season – if that. The bottom line: I like the under, but bettors have already hammered that wager and the value (-150) isn’t good. The over offers decent value at +125, but I just can’t get there. For now, the O/U win total is a stay-away for me. If I had to pick one, I’d eat the juice and go with the under.

That’s a wrap. Keep it here for some fantasy draft content, coming soon!