Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Super Bowl LIV Odds: What They Tell Us
The various sports books have had enough of a chance to digest how every team fared first in free agency and then in the draft to make their posting of odds on who will win Super Bowl LIV relevant, when it would not have been before. Obviously, the numbers will vary somewhat from one book to another, but below is a representative example, courtesy of FanDuel and dated June 4th:
New England: 7-1
Kansas City: 8-1
New Orleans: 17-2
L.A. Rams: 9-1
Cleveland: 14-1
L.A. Chargers: 14-1
Indianapolis: 16-1
Philadelphia: 16-1
Chicago: 16-1
Green Bay: 18-1
Dallas: 23-1
Pittsburgh: 23-1
Atlanta: 26-1
Minnesota: 26-1
Houston: 28-1
San Francisco: 30-1
Seattle: 30-1
Baltimore: 34-1
Jacksonville: 42-1
Carolina: 50-1
Tennessee: 50-1
Denver: 60-1
Tampa Bay: 60-1
N.Y. Jets: 60-1
N.Y. Giants: 70-1
Oakland: 70-1
Washington: 70-1
Buffalo: 80-1
Detroit: 80-1
Cincinnati: 100-1
Arizona: 110-1
Miami: 120-1
Most of these numbers are pretty straightforward. However, some notable anomalies stand out:
The Browns as the co-fifth choice in the league? Really?
The Packers at 18-1 and the Lions at 80-1 when the Packers finished a scant half game ahead of Detroit a year ago, when Matthew Stafford played with a broken back? The oddsmakers need to stop riding a certain part of the anatomy of Aaron Rodgers.
The Falcons at 26-1 and the Panthers at 50-1 — when Atlanta has to play the Eagles and Vikings in 2019 while Carolina gets to play the Redskins and Packers? (Both teams finished 7-9 a year ago, with Atlanta carrying the tie-breaker for beating Carolina twice — the second time in a meaningless game in Week 16 when both teams were out of playoff contention).
Do we know that Mecole Hardman is going to step right in and even come close to hanging up the numbers that Tyreek Hill hung up in the last three years?
And that's a lot of blind faith they're showing in Jimmy Garoppolo, who is coming off a catastrophic ACL injury, installing the 49ers at the same price as the Seahawks, who finished six games ahead of San Francisco in 2018.
From this vantage point, the two teams that Nick Foles has been with most recently — the newly-reloaded Eagles and now the Jaguars — are the two most attractive teams on the board, while the Rams (the Super Bowl Runner-Up Jinx) and the Steelers (the 20th Overall Pick Jinx, even though they traded that pick away on draft day) are unbettable at any price.