Richard Gardner is Bodog's Sportsbook Manager
You don’t know how many novice bettors are surprised to learn that Super Bowl futures are up all season and that they change weekly. We put our odds to win the Super Bowl up after the final game of the week and then take them down at the start of the first game each week – we do this all the way through the start of the championship games.
I think even an experienced bettor might be surprised at how much one week’s result can change a team’s Super Bowl odds. No sport is affected more by injuries on a week-to-week basis than the NFL. I’m guessing that you threw away that Patriots Super Bowl XLIII betting ticket as soon as Tom Brady went down in a crumple early in Week 1 of 2008 against the Chiefs last year. Certainly the Chicago Bears’ odds were altered this season when Brian Urlacher was lost for the season after a Week 1 loss to Green Bay.
The biggest drop for a team in Super Bowl odds to win from the beginning of the season through Week 7 has been what has to be the league’s biggest surprise (from a positive perspective): the Denver Broncos. Oddsmakers didn’t have a whole lot of faith in rookie coach Josh McDaniels, new quarterback Kyle Orton and then-disgruntled star receiver Brandon Marshall. But Denver, with McDaniels looking like a boy genius, Orton like an MVP candidate and Marshall a happy camper (not to mention a shockingly good defense), is now +1100 to win Super Bowl XLIV in Miami – it opened the season at +4000 after Jay Cutler was dealt.
So, if you are a Broncos fan and wanted to win some money on your team, it obviously didn’t pay to wait in this case. If you had the foresight to put your Super Bowl bet down in the preseason, you are feeling pretty confident right now and sitting on great value.
Nonetheless, sometimes it does pay to wait until later in the season. For example, the Arizona Cardinals’ odds shot up in a big way following the Cards’ 47-7 loss at New England in Week 16 of last season. No one took them seriously after that – and we all know what happened, with the Cards coming within one Ben Roethlisberger completion from paying off nicely.
Seriously, you almost want to root for your team to lay an egg once in a while for the line to shift to longer Super Bowl odds. The Packers’ and Bears’ odds have both fluctuated plenty this season. As mentioned above, Chicago’s rose after Urlacher’s injury but then dropped after Cutler led the Bears to three wins in a row, including over the Steelers. Now Chicago is back up to +3000 after looking very bad last week in Cincinnati. Green Bay’s odds also have been all over, starting with their win over Chicago (down) and a home loss to Cincinnati (up) that doesn’t look so bad now. The Pack are currently at +2200.
The Dallas Cowboys were the only team to see their futures odds drop off last week’s result, which was a 37-21 victory against the Falcons. So Dallas dropped from +3000 to win it all after an ugly win at Kansas City to +2000 following the impressive victory over Atlanta.
So what’s the moral of the story? Just because you may have put down a futures bet in the preseason, you should still monitor the odds because value can be found week-to-week. And while it sounds sacrilegious as a fan to root for your team to take an occasional big-time beating, it can pay off for a wise futures bettor who jumps on the suddenly longer odds.