It’s a truism that every team starts the season undefeated. That doesn’t mean that pundits, players, and the public don’t have an opinion on who’s going to finish the season on top.
Vegas funnels all those opinions into one number for each team: betting odds. With 32 teams all vying for one Super Bowl trophy, each team (even if it’s the preseason favorite) begins with the odds against it. But some start with longer odds than others.
In 1979, the Terry Bradshaw-led Pittsburgh Steelers entered the season with +240 odds to win the Super Bowl, meaning if you placed a $100 bet before Week 1, you would have won $240. Not bad, but it’s not the $15,000 that someone would have won for betting on the Rams before the 1999 season.
That team was quarterbacked by Kurt Warner, an Arena Football League journeyman who, entering the year, had just 11 pass attempts in his NFL career. He proceeded to throw 41 touchdowns on a 65.1% completion rate on his way to the league MVP; ”The Greatest Show on Turf” racked up a 13–3 regular season record and won the Super Bowl.
Untested quarterbacks are a common theme on our list of the top 10 Super Bowl champions with the longest preseason odds.
Tom Brady got in just three pass attempts as Drew Bledsoe’s understudy in 2000. In 2001, with the Patriots listed at +6000 odds to win it all, he helped the team win its first Super Bowl.
Or how about Joe Montana and the 1981 49ers? Though not quite as untested as Warner or Brady, he had spent much of his sophomore 1980 season backing up Steve DeBerg and went just 2–5 in his starts. In his first full season, with the 49ers listed as +5000 longshots, he helped deliver a 13–3 record and San Francisco’s first playoff appearance since 1972. The rest, of course, is Super Bowl history.
Ranking the Biggest Preseason Longshots to Win the Super Bowl
Here is the list of the 10 biggest preseason longshots to win a Super Bowl. The list was compiled using historical odds from Sports Odds History.
1999: St. Louis Rams / +15000
2001: New England Patriots / +6000
1981: San Francisco 49ers / +5000
2017: Philadelphia Eagles / +4000
1982: Washington Redskins / +3500
1980: Oakland Raiders / +3500
2007: New York Giants / +3000
2011: New York Giants / +2200
2000: Baltimore Ravens / +2200
2009: New Orleans Saints / +2000
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