playDoug GreenbergSep 9, 2026, 11:43 AM ETCloseDoug Greenberg covers sport betting for ESPN. He previously covered sports betting, sports business and fantasy sports at Front Office Sports, VSiN and RotoWire. He lives in Chicago after growing up in Boston.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsAfter a busy offseason that saw them acquire All-Pro defensive players Trent McDuffie and Myles Garrett, the Los Angeles Rams will head into the 2026 NFL as the clear favorites to win the Super Bowl, but history may be on the side of a very strong midfield of contenders instead.The Rams show +500 odds to win Super Bowl LXI at their home SoFi Stadium, with the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens appearing as the second teams on the odds board at 10-1, according to DraftKings lines.The Seattle Seahawks come in at 12-1 and, because they share the NFC West with Los Angeles, they are the first reigning champions to not be favored to win the division since the 2016 Denver Broncos, who were reeling from the retirement of Peyton Manning, per ESPN Research.Despite their relatively short odds, the Rams are still attracting futures wagers from the betting public in force. DraftKings reports a whopping 20.2% of its Super Bowl handle backing L.A. (Buffalo comes in second at 9.8%) with BetMGM also reporting its highest ticket and money percentages behind the Rams.
It’s creating the rare scenario where the team with the shortest odds is actually making problems for some bookmakers.”It’s usually not in this scenario of going into the season where we have a liability on the Super Bowl favorite,” Caesars Sportsbook head of football Joey Feazel told ESPN. “That’s usually not what people, especially at five-to-one, are attracted to, but it’s been one-way traffic here. So I think the biggest adjustment has been on the Rams.”However, Los Angeles is far from a lock to win this season’s championship if recent history is any indication. Since 1995, teams with preseason Super Bowl odds of +500 or shorter have failed to win the title 23 consecutive times, with the last team to accomplish that feat being the 1994 San Francisco 49ers at +200.Between that and the fact that last season’s Super Bowl was contested between two teams that entered the season with 60-1 odds, the Seahawks and New England Patriots, bookmakers have tightened up the midfield considerably: Going into the 2026 campaign, 16 teams — half the league — have championship odds of 25-1 or shorter.”It kind of really opens up more so than probably in the past,” DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello said, noting that having so many teams in the teen-range of odds is unusual.
“We’ve got a bunch of teams in that area. So when we adjusted our odds, we got that short price team and nobody really in single digits after that, but a bunch of teams following it in anywhere from 10-to-one to 20-to-one.”Of those teams, one that is attracting action across the board is the Broncos (20-1), who fell just short of playing in the Super Bowl last season. BetMGM trading manager Christian Cipollini called them the “biggest liability of realistic teams” after one bettor put down a $10,000 wager to win $200,000.The sportsbook similarly took “sharp action” on the Chicago Bears (24-1 at DraftKings) and Los Angeles Chargers (17-1). The Cincinnati Bengals (18-1) have also been a buzzy team across the sportsbook marketplace.Bettors are taking fliers on some longshots as well.
Avello says the New York Giants (70-1) are DraftKings’ largest liability, owing to the team’s big-market popularity and excitement surrounding a young core under a new head coach. BetMGM and Caesars — the Las Vegas-based books — say there has also been some outsized action on the hometown Las Vegas Raiders (150-1 at DraftKings), with the former counting them as its largest liability.
