Do you really want to put your money on a team that would earn a Vince Lombardi Trophy with the second longest preseason odds ever?
Longshot National Football League teams sometimes crack the playoff field, less often win a postseason game and once in a great while advance to the Super Bowl. But win it? Not so much.
The longest game day odds for a Super Bowl winner was the New York Jets over the Baltimore Colts to complete the 1968 season. But, the Jets were among the best teams in the American Football League, and when they met the Colts as a 19 point underdog in the third AFL/NFL World Championship Game, it was more a reflection on the perceived stoutness of the two leagues than the overall strength of the Joe Namath led Jets.
The National Football League and American Football League announced a merger in 1966 which included the two leagues becoming one with two conferences beginning in 1970, while the two leagues would initiate a championship game series in the 1966 season. The National Football League Green Bay Packers won the first two title games with relative ease, beating the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders by 35-10 and 33-14 scores respectively.
The Colts were expected to run up a similar result against the Jets before New York pulled the upset, 16-7.
The Cincinnati Bengals opened this season with the likes of the Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants and New York Jets, all five teams with the longest odds to win Super Bowl LVI at 100 to 1. Only one team in history, the St. Louis Rams in 1999, won a Super Bowl with longer preseason odds.
The Rams in 1999 lost their starting quarterback, Trent Green, to a season ending injury in an August preseason game. They were left to rely on an undrafted quarterback who most recently had been stocking shelves at a grocery store. When it was announced that Kurt Warner would be their starting quarterback, I was doing a live broadcast on ESPN radio and joked, “Isn’t he a runningback for the Seattle Seahawks?”
Ha, ha. Yeah, the Seahawks did have a runningback out of Penn State who was the third player selected in the 1983 draft, behind a couple players who have been enshrined in the Hall of Fame, John Elway and Eric Dickerson. While Curt Warner was a solid NFL runner, the Warner that spells his first name with a “K” is also in the Hall of Fame and led the Rams to a Super Bowl win in the 1999 season after the odds for that happening skyrocketed to 150-1 following Green’s injury.
Only three other teams in NFL history have won a Super Bowl with preseason odds of 50 to 1 or higher. That list would be the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles, who beat Tom Brady and his New England Patriots five years ago after opening the season at 60-1. The New England Patriots, in the first year Brady moved into the starting quarterback role, were also 60-1 longshots to win the Super before the 2001 season.
In 1981, the San Francisco 49ers were coming off a six win regular season and carried preseason Super Bowl odds of 50-1. Their opponent that year, in Super Bowl XVI, was also coming off a 6-10 regular season in 1980. In the NFC and AFC Championship Games that season the 49ers and Bengals knocked out a couple of the favorites in preseason odds, the Dallas Cowboys and San Diego Chargers respectively.
So, The Rams had an unknown who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career directing their offense, the Eagles buoyed by making up for their loss in December of their starting quarterback and rallying behind Nick Foles, and the 49ers got to meet another team with long odds before the season began.
The Bengals this season don’t have any similar advantages.
They are playing with the athletes projected before the season began and meeting a team that was one of the favorites to win it all before the 2021 season kicked off, the Los Angeles Rams. While preseason odds had the Bengals grouped with four teams that were no closer to making the playoffs than the cleaning crew at your office building, the Rams preseason odds were with the likes of the Kansas City Chiefs, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers, Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills.
The Rams declared this season to be the year they went all in while searching for their first Super Bowl victory as the Los Angeles Rams. They have traded away their future while handing out high draft choices like you or I may pass out candy to kids at the door on Halloween. In return for their future, the Rams have banked on veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford and one-time Super Bowl MVP Von Miller to join an already talented cast of players in search of a Vince Lombardi Trophy.
If they win Super Bowl LVI, it may all be considered worth the expenditure of high draft choices. If they don’t, well at least they won’t have to work on the first day of the draft given they don’t have a pick this year until the fifth round, and only three picks overall with two seventh round choices with their fifth round selection.
Yeah, the Rams are all in on this Super Bowl and meeting a team that has the second longest odds of any team that won the NFL title game.
As Trotter said in the movie Let it Ride, “You like the odds on lightning?”