The odds for Super Bowl 55 have drastically changed from the start of the 2020 season to now. Right now, there are only two teams left standing: the Kansas City Chiefs from the AFC and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the NFC. Taking a look at how they reached that point, in terms of how fans bet them at sportsbooks and sports betting websites, forms an interesting snapshot of two teams that took very different paths to get to this point.
At the beginning of every NFL season, all 32 teams are said to have an equal chance of winning it all, because, as the cliché goes, everybody is unbeaten at that point. Of course, there are many teams who really don’t have much of a sho,t because they don’t have the personnel to hang around with some of the tougher teams in the league. And that’s why futures betting is such a popular outlet both before and during the NFL season.
With a futures bet, you get to lock in your odds for whatever team you pick to win it all (or win a conference or division, depending on the wager.) Those odds tend to rise and fall, both in the preseason with personnel changes and injuries, and during the regular season, as teams’ fortunes rise and fall with every win and loss.
Chiefs vs Buccaneers On The Odds Board
This past Sunday, the contestants in Super Bowl LV were set. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers went on the road to upset the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship to punch their ticket. Later that night, the favored Kansas City Chiefs easily handled the Buffalo Bills to once again win the AFC Championship.
For the casual fan, the matchup might come down to the league’s brightest current star, Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and perhaps its greatest player of all time, Buccaneers’ quarterback Tom Brady. But for bettors, they’ll be talking more about how these teams reached this point in terms of their preseason odds vs now. That can be an instructive discussion, especially in terms of the lessons it teaches going forward for futures wagers in years to come.
In the following article, we’ll track how the odds for winning it all have changed throughout the year for the Chiefs and Bucs. We’ll take a look at their various peaks and valleys all the way from the futures odds laid down in last year’s Super Bowl to the championship games that put them in the big game. And we’ll also take a look at what you as a bettor can glean from the lessons of the odds of these two teams.
How Futures Odds Work
Before you can really get into tracking the odds of the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers all the way to Super Bowl LV, it’s important that you understand how futures odds work. Oddsmakers are attempting to move these odds around to the point that roughly the same amount of money is being bet on all possible wagering options. Futures odds works on a concept of $100 bet:
- If there is a minus sign in front of the odds, you must bet the listed amount to win $100
- If there is a plus sign in front of the odds, you must bet $100 to win that amount
As an example, if you were to see this Super Bowl 55 futures bet:
- Team X: +1400
This means that a $100 bet on that team would win you $1,400 in return should Team X win it all. Another way to look at it is that this team has odds of 14 to 1. You can use those odds to help you gauge how much you would win if you were to bet more or less than $100.
In the case of futures’ bets, you’re more than likely than not to see a plus sign in front of most of the teams listed, which means you’ll earn back more than you bet if you win. This is because these are not easy bets to hit. A lot of things can derail a team from reaching the playoffs, let alone making the Super Bowl.
In addition, you’ll have 32 NFL teams with a chance to win it all. If every team were absolutely equal in terms of their talent level, you would get 32 to 1. But of course, that’s not the case, and that’s why the odds differ so drastically between teams.
Timing Your Futures Bet
The idea behind a futures wager is that you’re trying to time it so that you get the best value. Think of it like the stock market. You want to buy low if at all possible, so that you can get the best possible return on your investment.
That means that you should be seeking teams that are on the upswing and may not have received a lot of betting attention. Or it could also mean taking worthwhile teams that have stumbled, perhaps causing their odds to soar when bettors overreact (which happened to Tampa Bay a few times, as we’ll see.) Remember that with futures bets, you’re thinking of the long run and not necessarily what’s happening in the here and now.
One other way to think of a futures bet is to try to lock in on a favorite early on before others start to jump on the bandwagon, which comes into play when you’re talking about teams like Kansas City, who won Super Bowl LIV and were therefore always favored for Super Bowl LV. If you bet on them early enough, you’d have a chance to win a lot more than if you waited till now and went with them to beat the Bucs either on the moneyline or against the spread. With futures bets, timing is indeed everything.
Tracking The Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl 55 Odds
February 3, 2020: +650
This was right after the Chiefs rallied to beat the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl 54, winning their first title in 50 years. It would also be the longest their odds would be in the next eleven months. In other words, if you wanted to get the most value out of betting them, you had to roll the dice well in advance when anything could possibly have gone wrong in the interim.
September 5, 2020: +543
On the eve of the 2020 season, the Chiefs still stood out as the definitive favorite, even though there hasn’t been a back-to-back Super Bowl champion in 16 seasons. The offseason didn’t see them lose any huge pieces. If anything, many thought they could be even stronger following the drafting of talented running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire, which seemed to shore up one of the few weak spots on the roster.
October 12, 2020: +400
The Chiefs odds rose from +317 the previous week following their first loss of the season, a surprising upset at the hands of the division rival Las Vegas Raiders. Still, they never wavered from being the favorite during the regular season. And they would answer any concerns by winning their next ten games, before finishing out the season with a meaningless loss in the season finale to end up 14-2 and secure both a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the NFL playoffs.
January 4, 2021: +200
This was where they stood at the beginning of the playoffs. By contrast, the Green Bay Packers, the home-field advantage owner in the NFC, stood at +450. Still, getting two to one on the Chiefs winning it all at that point is much more advantageous than the moneyline betting odds they’re currently facing to win the game.
January 19, 2021: +213
These were the odds following the Chiefs’ gutty win over the upstart Cleveland Brows in the divisional playoffs. If you recall, that was a game where Mahomes missed most of the second half following a concussion, forcing Chad Henne to step in to close the deal. The odds dropped a little bit more once it became clear that Mahomes would play in the AFC Championship against the Buffalo Bills, which he did (and played brilliantly.)
Tracking The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl 55 Odds
February 3, 2020: +5000
The Buccaneers suffered through an ugly 2019 campaign, one that began with high expectations. Although quarterback Jameis Winston rolled up massive passing yards, he also threw a ton of interceptions, which put too much pressure on the defense. It was hard to see Tampa turning it around considering how sideways things had gone.
March 18, 2020: +1267
Tampa’s odds plummeted on the news that Tom Brady, six-time Super Bowl champion (four times MVP) would be leaving New England after two decade to sign with the Bucs. Suddenly, a team that looked at sea seemed to have a purpose. And Brady’s reputation brought bettors along with him.
September 5, 2020: +900
The excitement in Tampa only grew in the offseason once Brady came aboard. When Rob Gronkowski came out of retirement to join Brady with the Buccaneers, it gave them another betting boost. Heading into the year, they were generally around the fifth choice out of the 32 teams to win the Super Bowl in a consensus of sportsbooks and online betting sites.
September 15, 2020: +1600
Tampa was handled pretty easily by division rival New Orleans in the opening week. Brady struggled a bit, throwing a pair of interceptions, while Gronkowski managed a weak 11 yards on two catches. Futures bettors no longer believed in them as they had in the offseason.
November 5, 2020: +617
The Bucs righted the ship following the opening game debacle, winning six of seven games. This happened even as injuries kept all their top offensive pieces from really coalescing. In fact, it was their opportunistic defense which made the difference in the streak.
December 7, 2020: +1400
Tampa Bay limped into their bye week with losses in three of four games, which sent the rollercoaster of their Super Bowl 55 odds back into the stratosphere. The addition of Antonio Brown didn’t seem to do any favors for the offense. More importantly, the defense seemed at a loss, as both New Orleans and Kansas City carved them up in that stretch.
January 4, 2021: +1100
Even though they finished the season on a much better note with four wins in a row, Tampa still wasn’t getting a lot of futures love going into the playoffs. The main issue was the fact that, by not winning the division, the Bucs almost assured themselves that they’d have to win three road games in a row just to make Super Bowl 55.
What You Can Learn From Tracking The 2021 Super Bowl Betting Odds
Consistency Matters
It’s tempting to get carried away looking at the shiny new object, so to speak, when it comes to futures wagers. For that reason, you might have seen Kansas City’s odds at various points during the offseason and 2020 regular season and thought that there wasn’t any real flash in making the futures bet. After all, they were still the same Chiefs from the previous year.
But you had a team that returned just about every key piece from their conquest in Super Bowl LIV. The other top contenders couldn’t claim that same thing. As a result, the Chiefs might not have been an exciting or potentially lucrative futures pick, but there’s a good chance that they’ll be the right one.
The Brady Factor
2020 wasn’t Tom Brady’s best season, by any stretch of the imagination. But it was much better than could have been expected from any other 43-year-old. Not to mention that he was a 43-year-old having to start fresh in a whole new season with a whole new coach and new personnel on top of that.
There were always bound to be growing pains along the way. But the bottom line is that there is a reason that this guy came into the year having played in the Super Bowl ten times in his 20-year career. That’s the kind of track record that means something, and one that you should have been sticking with regardless of the inevitable ups and downs.
Look Deeper Than The Record
The Buccaneers 2019 record wasn’t pretty, and they gave up a ton of points. But a closer look revealed a defense with a lot of fine young talent getting better every week, despite constantly being put in bad positions by turnovers. That defense really came to life in 2020, especially during the postseason run.
There were occasional rough patches, of course. And they still have to prove that they can solve the Chiefs, especially Tyreek Hill, who singlehandedly dismantled them in the regular season game. But the Tampa Bay defense was showing the stuff of champions in 2019 even when they were losing every week.
Answering Questions About Super Bowl 55 Betting
Will Your Futures Odds Change After You Make the Bet?
Once you make a futures wager, it’s locked in. That could be a good thing, especially if team that you picked really starts to perform better after the bet is made. But you could also choose poorly and have a team that goes south after the bet.
Will I Get My Money Back if My Super Bowl Futures Bet Doesn’t Make the Super Bowl?
The reason you’re getting such odds on a Super Bowl futures bet is because of the risk involved. That risk would be removed if you were let off the hook when your team doesn’t make it to the game. You will lose your bet in any instance except the team you picked winning it all.
Can a Super Bowl Futures Bet Provide Lucrative Winnings?
It depends on the odds, of course. But there is generally much more profit potential in betting on a team weeks or months before the game takes place. In addition, the fact that you have to choose among 32 teams, instead of between just two, also drives up the potential payback.
Should I Shop Around for the Best Futures Odds?
If you really have one team in mind for your Super Bowl futures pick, you should consider looking around different real money sports betting websites to see the odds. You might be able to find a site where the odds are much more advantageous to you. That said, you should never choose a site just because of odds alone.
What Are the Best Sites for 2021 Super Bowl Betting?
Conclusion
We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at Super Bowl 55 odds preseason versus now. It proves how two teams can make the big game vastly different journeys. And it will also help you make your futures wagers next year with a little more clarity.
Jim Beviglia
Jim Beviglia joined Gamblingsites.org as a staff writer in 2018, parlaying his years of freelance writing into contributions on a number of different topics. He handles the sport of horse racing for GamblingSites.org and the intersection between the worlds of cryptocurrency and online gambling in a weekly blog.
For his full-time job, Jim handles the television and track announcing duties at a h …
