I’m excited. I know that I start so many of these articles — whether at the beginning of the regular season or the playoffs — with the same comment, but I can’t help it. I truly love the National Football League.
It’s because of the storylines.
I’m a writer. I live for the narratives that exist everywhere. Specifically, the dual narratives.
In football, we see them all the time in the form simplified numbers on the surface and valuable analysis underneath.
This year, we have a few excellent storylines we can pinpoint immediately, and they all stem from one word: Trust.
Do we trust the one-seeds in each Conference to use their bye weeks wisely and vault into the Super Bowl?
Do we trust the Buffalo Bills, a team that has been among the favorites to win for years, to finally take advantage of a comparatively depleted playoff field?
Do we even trust that the field is depleted?
The best part about the postseason is that we don’t actually have to answer those questions. We simply need to acknowledge that “trust” is completely subject to opinion. And we can attack those opinions through the numbers.
That’s where we’ll start.
NFL Odds to Win Super Bowl LX – Courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook via ESPN.com:
1st Seed – Seattle Seahawks (3.5 to 1)
5th Seed – Los Angeles Rams (4.25 to 1)
1st Seed – Denver Broncos (6.5 to 1)
2nd Seed – New England Patriots (9.5 to 1)
3rd Seed – Philadelphia Eagles (9.5 to 1)
6th Seed – Buffalo Bills (10 to 1)
5th Seed – Houston Texans (13 to 1)
3rd Seed – Jacksonville Jaguars (13 to 1)
2nd Seed – Chicago Bears (22 to 1)
7th Seed – Green Bay Packers (22 to 1)
7th Seed – Los Angeles Chargers (28 to 1)
6th Seed – San Francisco 49ers (28 to 1)
4th Seed – Pittsburgh Steelers (45 to 1)
4th Seed – Carolina Panthers (150 to 1)
One of the first steps I take with this article every year is to look at how the odds of this season’s group looks compared to last year’s. The differences are eye-popping. Last year, exactly half of the 14-team playoff field had odds of 28-to-1 or shorter to win the Super Bowl. This year? Every team except two fit into that category. That certainly suggests that it is a much more wide open race this year than in the past. Unfortunately, as much fun as I would have rooting for the longest of longshots in the Carolina Panthers to take the title, those odds are so laughable that there’s simply no way it should work. I won’t shock anyone to cut them out of my list of Super Bowl contenders.
But what about the Pittsburgh Steelers, the other team that’s outside of that 28-to-1 odds mark — which is truly an arbitrary cutoff point but one that highlights the contrast between these two particular seasons — as a ‘sleeper pick’? Quite frankly, this is where I would want to put my attention. If we are arguing that the AFC is quite open — more on that in a moment — then we cannot dismiss the path Pittsburgh would take to winning it. Assuming it gets through the first round, it actually has a series of fortunate events lined up for it. Wild Card wins by the Bills and Chargers would mean the Steelers would get at least one more home game, with a second possible. If the Jaguars and Patriots advance, then the Bills — who beat Pittsburgh 26-7 this year — would be out of the way. If Buffalo and New England win, then the Steelers couldn’t run into the Bills until the AFC Championship Game. Pittsburgh could absolutely be eliminated on Monday night, but their odds are worth the risk we would take with them.
Staying in the range of odds, how can we not love what is being offered for the