Whether it’s NFL, XFL, or NBA, attempting to predict an entire season is a daunting task. Yet, every August and early September, legions of analysts attempt to do it before the NFL season gets underway. In a normal year, there will always be a mixed bag, with perhaps a surprise or two catching everyone on the hop. Last season, for example, we saw plenty of pundits pull out the Eagles as a big contender months before they duly delivered a Super Bowl for the Philadelphia fans.
However, the 2025 season was one for the ages when it came to bad predictions. The Ravens and Chiefs battling out as the AFC’s kings? The Lions to roar once again? The Eagles to repeat? The Bills to finally break the postseason curse? These were the kind of takes we were seeing in late summer. It was reflected in the odds for Super Bowl LX, too, as bettors laid down millions on those considered to be contenders.
Super Bowl betting favorites collapsed
It is, of course, not abnormal for heavily backed teams to fall by the wayside. NFL history is littered with examples of fallen favorites, such as the Rams’ collapse in the 2022 season as defending Super Bowl champions. Yet, it is uncommon for so many to fall by the wayside. As far as the stats go, four of the six top teams in the Super Bowl betting markets failed to make the postseason. One (Bills) exited on the Wild Card Weekend, and the Eagles fell in the Divisional Round.
While the pundits may have picked out some of the teams that made the Conference Finals – Patriots, Seahawks, Broncos, Rams – you can appreciate that it would have been highly rare. Perhaps some guy running an obscure YouTube channel figured it out, or maybe your buddy at the bar called it for his final four. But the mainstream sports analysts most certainly did not.
Some saw the emergence of the Broncos
Of course, people did call out individual teams that defied the betting odds. We saw lots of takes across the summer that said the Broncos would finally dethrone the Chiefs in the AFC West, though they remained minority voices. There was also a lot of optimism that Mike Vrabel would transform the Patriots into a winning team, even if you would have been laughed at for predicting a 14-3 season and floating through the Playoffs as if it were the 2000s again.
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So, some people did pick a surprise package for a good run, but nobody had the conviction to say we would have an overhaul of the favorites in a spell-binding NFL campaign. None of that is meant to be a criticism – that’s what can happen with analysts and betting predictions. It’s just that this season was particularly off.
What does become interesting, however, is next season. Why? Well, you have several teams with talented rosters – Ravens, Chiefs, Lions, etc. – who could and should have done better. We can even cite teams like the Vikings, who felt a bit unlucky. You can be almost certain that a couple of them will have a bounce back. But it’s going to be difficult to model. Still, it makes it a little more intriguing, especially as pundits will be aiming to do a little better in their predictions than the season just past.
