Chris Andrews, a veteran Las Vegas oddsmaker with more than 40 years of bookmaking experience, scrolled through his NFL numbers over the weekend and noticed something unusual. Entering Week 18, he had seven teams with Super Bowl odds shorter than 10-1.
"That's way more than most years," Andrews, the sportsbook director at the South Point casino, said. "It's just so wide open."
As the wild-card round prepares to kick off, the NFL playoffs have a different feel to them, and not just because Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs aren't in the mix. No team has been able to separate itself as a dominant favorite, leaving a bevy of top-tier contenders to fight off a handful of upstarts who have transformed from long shots to legitimate contenders this season.
Six teams -- the Buffalo Bills, Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams, Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks -- were Super Bowl favorites at different points this season at sportsbooks, the most in a regular season since 2012, according to SportsOddsHistory.com.
Eight of the 12 teams in the postseason were underdogs to make the playoffs in the preseason, including the Seahawks, the current favorites to win the Super Bowl. They began this week with +360 Super Bowl odds at DraftKings, the fifth-longest price on the Super Bowl favorite entering the playoffs in the past 50 seasons.
While the Seahawks are the favorites for now, professional oddsmakers have another team atop their power ratings, the numbers used to shape their sportsbook's odds. Four veteran oddsmakers interviewed in January by ESPN all had the Rams at No. 1 in their power ratings. (The Rams also are No. 1 in ESPN's Football Power Index).
"The Rams would be favored over any other team. I believe that," Jamey Pileggi, head NFL oddsmakers for Circa Sports, said. "Because when they're clicking, I don't think anyone is above them."
The Rams didn't emerge as Super Bowl favorites until Week 13 at some sportsbooks, but oddsmakers said they moved Los Angeles to the top of their power ratings midway through the season and kept them there the rest of the way, despite an uneven finish to the season. The Rams went 3-3 in the final six weeks, including surprising losses to the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons, and a late blown lead against the Seahawks. The Rams are 10-point road favorites over the Panthers in a Saturday wild-card rematch.
Pileggi and Andrews both said that while the Rams are the top team in their power ratings, Los Angeles hasn't opened up a significant gap over the other contenders. Even though the Rams are No. 1 in the oddsmakers' power ratings, the Seahawks have the shortest Super Bowl odds due to the amount of betting interest and liability that's accrued this season in the futures market.
The consensus among the oddsmakers was that at least four teams are all within a field goal of each other at top of their ratings. Other than two No. 4 seeds -- the Pittsburgh Steelers and Panthers -- Pileggi said he had trouble counting anyone out.
"I would say it's been since the Chiefs' dynasty began that we've had this wide-open of a field," Pileggi said.
The playoff parity has divided the betting public, leaving sportsbooks mostly in a good position in their Super Bowl futures books, with only a few liabilities. At DraftKings, the New England Patriots are the biggest liability. Circa pointed to either the Seahawks or Houston Texans winning as the worst-case scenarios for them, thanks to a couple of big bets earlier in the season when each team had long odds. Caesars Sportsbook and South Point have the San Francisco 49ers as a worst-case scenario, while BetMGM told ESPN that the Bills and Denver Broncos represented the biggest liabilities in their odds to win the Super Bowl.
Last year at this time, only five teams had attracted at least 5% of the total money wagered on BetMGM's odds to win the Super Bowl. This year, 10 teams have accounted for at least 5% of the Super Bowl money bet at the sportsbook.
The evenly-matched playoff bracket is expected to produce ultra-tight point spreads. The lowest average point spread in a single postseason in the Super Bowl era was 3.89 in 1980. The average point spread in the six wild-card games this weekend is around 3.75.
