Sportsbooks set Super Bowl odds every offseason with real conviction, but the numbers rarely hold up.
Over the last decade, the actual preseason favorite has won the Super Bowl only three times, and some of the most extreme long shots in NFL history have gone on to hoist the Lombardi Trophy instead.
Here’s what the data actually shows, champion by champion and favorite by favorite, and why this year’s board looks a little different from most.
The Last 10 Super Bowl Winners vs. Who Was Actually Favored
| Season | Champion (Preseason Odds) | Actual Favorite (Preseason Odds) | Favorite’s Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 (SB LX) | Seattle Seahawks (+6000) | Ravens, Bills, Eagles (+700, 3-way tie) | None reached the Super Bowl |
| 2024 (SB LIX) | Philadelphia Eagles (+1200) | Kansas City Chiefs (+600) | Reached the Super Bowl, lost to Philadelphia |
| 2023 (SB LVIII) | Kansas City Chiefs (+600) | Kansas City Chiefs (+600) | Favorite won it all |
| 2022 (SB LVII) | Kansas City Chiefs (+1020) | Buffalo Bills (+600) | Lost in the Divisional Round |
| 2021 (SB LVI) | Los Angeles Rams (+1200) | Kansas City Chiefs (+450) | Lost the AFC Championship |
| 2020 (SB LV) | Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+1000) | Kansas City Chiefs (+450) | Reached the Super Bowl, lost to Tampa Bay |
| 2019 (SB LIV) | Kansas City Chiefs (+600) | New England Patriots (+400) | Lost in the Wild Card round |
| 2018 (SB LIII) | New England Patriots (+600) | New England Patriots (+600) | Favorite won it all |
| 2017 (SB LII) | Philadelphia Eagles (+4000) | New England Patriots (approx. +250) | Reached the Super Bowl, lost to Philadelphia |
| 2016 (SB LI) | New England Patriots (+600) | New England Patriots (+600) | Favorite won it all |
The preseason favorite won the Super Bowl exactly three times in a full decade, all three by the same franchise.
In every other year, the favorite either lost the Super Bowl outright, got knocked out earlier in the playoffs, or in Buffalo’s and Seattle’s cases, never got anywhere close to the game at all.
Seattle’s Title Ranks Among the Biggest Longshots Ever
The Seahawks’ +6000 preseason odds tie for the second-longest of any eventual Super Bowl champion since bookmakers started tracking preseason numbers in 1977.
Only the 1999 St. Louis Rams, who opened at a staggering +15000 behind a career backup named Kurt Warner, have ever won it all from further back.
What makes Seattle’s run even more remarkable is who they beat: three co-favorites priced at roughly 1/9th their odds never made it out of the regular season with a real shot.
Seattle shares its tie with the 2001 New England Patriots, who also opened at +6000 the year Tom Brady took over for an injured Drew Bledsoe.
The rest of the all-time top 10 reads like a list of teams nobody saw coming: the 1981 49ers (+5000), the 2017 Eagles (+4000), and both the 1980 Raiders and 1982 Redskins at +3500.
Kansas City Is the Rare Favorite That Keeps Delivering
The Chiefs stand out in this data as the one team that has repeatedly justified being priced as a contender, even when it didn’t translate to a title.
They were the short-price favorite in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024, reaching the Super Bowl in three of those four years and actually winning the whole thing as the favorite in 2023.
No other franchise in this sample carries that kind of consistency between reputation and results.
The flip side is that being the favorite still cost Kansas City more championships than it delivered.
Losing as the favorite to the Buccaneers in 2020 and to the Eagles in 2024 shows even the league’s most reliably good team gets beaten by a squad the market didn’t fully respect going in.
When the Favorite Tag Becomes a Curse
Some preseason favorites have fared even worse than simply losing in the playoffs.
The 2003 Buccaneers opened as favorites at +800 as defending champions and finished 7-9, missing the postseason entirely.
The 2002 Rams, fresh off a Super Bowl appearance, opened at +350 and also missed the playoffs.
The 2008 Patriots, at +350, saw Tom Brady tear his ACL in Week 1 and finished 11-5, good enough to miss the playoffs on a tiebreaker.
Three preseason favorites or co-favorites missed the playoffs outright between 2002 and 2005 alone, a stretch that still stands out as the wildest run of chalk collapsing in modern NFL history.
It’s the kind of pattern worth remembering anytime a team looks like the obvious pick in early AFC or NFC winner odds.
What Actually Separates Winners From Chalk
The common thread among the biggest preseason underdogs who won it all isn’t talent evaluation catching up. It’s usually a quarterback change nobody priced in.
Kurt Warner wasn’t in the plans for the 1999 Rams until Trent Green got hurt.
Tom Brady wasn’t a starter when the 2001 Patriots opened at +6000.
The 2017 Eagles rode Nick Foles through the playoffs after Carson Wentz went down.
Even Seattle’s run behind Sam Darnold last season came from a player who’d started for five different teams without a single playoff win to his name before the year began.
Meanwhile, the safest-looking picks tend to be teams with an established, proven quarterback and a recent playoff track record, exactly the profile that keeps showing up near the top of the board without actually closing the deal.
That gap between name recognition and outcome is where the real value sits every offseason, and it’s worth remembering the next time a team’s MVP or Coach of the Year odds make it feel like a lock before a single game has been played.
This Year’s Board Looks Unusually Lopsided
Which brings us to 2026. The Los Angeles Rams enter this season as the clear favorite at roughly +500 to +550 depending on the book, the only team in the league priced shorter than +1000.
Buffalo and Baltimore sit next at around +1000, with Seattle’s title defense priced even longer than that.
It’s one of the more decisive single-favorite boards the league has had in years, built on an offense that already led the NFL in scoring plus an aggressive defensive overhaul that added Myles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, and Jaylen Watson, along with Aaron Donald’s return from retirement.
History says that kind of separation from the pack is rare, and rarely predictive.
Looking back at this data, the only recent favorites who actually delivered were the Patriots and Chiefs at the height of their dynasties, and even the Chiefs lost as the favorite twice in the same stretch they won it once.
The Rams have a real case as one of the most complete rosters in the league heading into September, but so did the 2002 Rams, the 2003 Buccaneers, and the 2022 Bills, and none of them made it out of the season with the trophy.
Whether Los Angeles becomes the fourth favorite in 11 years to actually finish the job is exactly the kind of question this list is built to answer, and it won’t have a clean one until February.
The Takeaway for This Year’s Board
History says the eventual champion is more likely to come from the middle or back of the board than from the very top, and even a team as consistently good as the Chiefs has been the favorite more often than it’s actually won.
That doesn’t mean fading every favorite outright, but it’s a reminder that preseason Super Bowl odds are a snapshot of reputation, not a forecast, and the gap between the two has produced some of the best value bets in NFL history.
