If you take a look at the current Super Bowl lines, you’ll notice one glaring fact: NFC teams and their athletes are prominently featured throughout. The NFL is a league that prides itself on parity, but it looks like the AFC is starting to fade into the background while the NFC steals the spotlight.
Super Bowl or Bust
As it stands 60% of the teams that grace the top-10 favorites to win the big game reside in the NFC. While 60% isn’t a huge disparity, teams in the NFC are much heavily favored throughout the entire Super Bowl odds futures market than their AFC foes. Here’s some proof: of the 10 teams at the bottom of the market, seven of them are from the AFC.
Last year’s runner up to the crown, the San Francisco 49ers, lead the top 10 at 6/1. They’re followed by the Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers, Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants, who round out the favored NFC teams. Every one of these teams has an elite-level quarterback. As you can see, the NFL is without a doubt a quarterback driven league.
The only AFC teams to make the top 10 are the Denver Broncos at 6/1, New England Patriots at 9/1, Houston Texans at 18/1 and the Baltimore Ravens at 25/1. The Broncos and Patriots boast two of the game’s best quarterbacks, but Matt Schaub isn’t elite and neither is Joe Flacco, even though his salary dictates otherwise.
Speaking of Flacco and the Ravens, those looking at Superbowl betting odds should be wary of the defending champions. They lost weapons on both sides of the ball in the offseason and the AFC North is a notoriously tough place to play football. Their season-win total is set at 8.5 games, so oddsmakers clearly think so as well.
Most Valuable Prop
Only three athletes from the AFC currently don the top-10 list for the NFL MVP Award. Those quarterbacks from the Broncos and Patriots grace the list, as does Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts, but 30% hardly speaks to the parity the NFL covets so greatly. In fact, if you expand the list to include the top-20 athletes favored to win the award, it gets worse as only six call the AFC home.
As you may have expected, the list is dominated by quarterbacks. The occasional running back (Adrian Peterson), wide receiver (Calvin Johnson) and defensive end (J.J. Watt) are also listed, but betting against a quarterback for NFL MVP is risky business. Since 2000, only four non-quarterbacks have won the award. Play it safe and take a shot on the field generals.
Not so Crystal Clear
The path to a Lombardi Trophy seems to get tougher every year. There hasn’t been a back-to-back Super Bowl winner since the Patriots in 2004-05 – another reason you may want to steer clear of the Ravens when forming your Superbowl online betting strategy. The NFL season is a grueling, 17-week affair and every so often a player gets injured and his team’s title shot follows him to injured reserve.
When it comes to placing a bet on the Super Bowl in 2013, don’t exclude the AFC and its athletes, but make sure you understand the balance of power is clearly shifting towards the NFC. That’s not to say that the Broncos can’t win it all, just that they may be favored slightly more because there simply isn’t a lot of competition throughout the AFC.