Any informed discussion about what National Football League team is going to end the 2026 season in a hail of confetti and accept the Vince Lombardi Trophy has to begin with the Los Angeles Rams.
Here is a team that was nearly equal in odds to the defending Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks for most of the off-season. Now Los Angeles is a league best 5 to 1 while the defending champions are 10 to 1. The Rams rise in rankings was first pinned to the acquisition of the considered best defensive lineman in the game, Myles Garrett. To add riches to the rich, the Rams then regained the services of a defensive lineman headed for Canton when Aaron Donald ended his two-year retirement and signed for the 2026 season with his old team.
In my four decades of running Qoxhi Picks we have correctly identified the Super Bowl winner seven times. That stat is enhanced by the fact that only once did we take a team with odds less than 12 to 1, that being the 1994 San Francisco 49ers who blew out the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX. The other six Super Bowl winners had odds of 14 to 1 or better making our seven wins a long-term profitable proposition.
The Rams, at 5 to 1, are priced out of our consideration. I look for the sweet spot in the odds, which I consider between 12 and 24 to 1. These are usually teams that are good enough to win and with odds that pay well enough to justify a season long wager.
Last year, the Seahawks and New England Patriots were both longshots of more than 60 to 1 when the season began. Seattle opened the season with 66 to 1 odds and the Patriots were 70 to 1 to win Super Bowl LX. Those odds actually went up after the first game of last season when both the Seahawks and Patriots lost their home openers to the 49ers and Las Vegas Raiders respectively. Only two teams in NFL history went on to win a Super Bowl after losing at home on opening day before Seattle pulled it off last February.
Okay, 2025 was a year for long shots in the Super Bowl. Will that snap back with the prohibitive favored Rams winning it all this season? Perhaps, but if they do, it won’t also mean a winning preseason wager for us on this year’s Super Bowl winner