The NFL On Tilt: How The Odds Reflect The Perceived AFC-NFC Imbalance

AFC teams won eight Super Bowls in nine years from the 1972 season through the 1980 season, after which NFC teams proceeded to win 15 of the next 16. The NBA’s Western Conference had a run from 1999-2011 with 10 titles in 13 years. From 1983 to 2000, American League teams won 12 of 17 World Series, which came on the heels of a remarkable streak from 1963-1982 that saw the National League win 19 out of 20 All-Star Games.

Sports history is dotted with power imbalances between conferences, though they’ve grown more rare in recent years as leagues have pursued parity and more athletes have kept their real estate agents busy. Perhaps because of that recent rarity, what’s suddenly happening in the NFL is all the more striking. The ascent of a slew of young quarterbacks and the offseason relocation of a few veterans has the AFC looking absurdly stacked and the NFC looking relatively soft.

Is that reflected in the NFL futures betting odds? Yes, depending on where you look and how you squint at one trend that might at first seem contrary to the premise.

Obstacles and optics

Surveying the major mobile sportsbooks, here are the most bettor-friendly lines for the theoretical top half of the league (16 of the 32 teams) to win the 2023 Super Bowl as of Wednesday morning:

Two uneven distributions emerge: Ten of the top 16 teams are in the AFC, but five of the top seven are in the NFC.

The first figure suggests the AFC is much deeper with serious contenders than the NFC. The second figure is subject to interpretation. It may mean the talent at the top of the NFC is every bit as strong, or even stronger, than the talent at the top of the AFC. Or it may mean something entirely different.

“To me, the prices are the way they are because in the AFC, you’re going to be scratching and clawing just to make the playoffs, particularly if you’re in the AFC West or the AFC North,” said Westgate SuperBook Director of Race & Sports John Murray. “Then you’ve got a few teams in the NFC like Tampa Bay, Green Bay — they’re basically in the playoffs. They are going to win their divisions. They’re going to have home playoff games to start the tournament. It’s just going to be a lot harder to get out of the regular season and get into the playoffs in the AFC.”

That adds up. There are 10 AFC teams that could legitimately contend for the Super Bowl — maybe 11 if you’re optimistic about the Las Vegas Raiders after the addition of Davante Adams — but only seven of them will actually make the playoffs and only one gets to play in the Super Bowl.

So the respective paths partially explain the odds. But Robert Mays, an NFL writer for The Athletic and the host of The Athletic Football Show, also believes the AFC’s superiority is slightly overstated.

“I think the reason the optics are the way that they are is quarterback-driven,” Mays said. “Think about something as simple as Russell Wilson going from the NFC to the AFC. That’s another mark signaling a power imbalance, where you take one more good quarterback from the NFC and put him into the AFC. And look at the AFC West — I mean, Derek Carr is the worst quarterback in the AFC West, but Derek Carr is like a top-12 quarterback in the NFL. There’s a quarterback imbalance, and I think it’s driving this conversation.

“NFC teams, meanwhile, are good in quieter ways. You look at the defensive nucleus that the Rams have with Jalen Ramsay and Aaron Donald — that’s always going to be there. The Niners are a really complete team. You look at the non-quarterback talent that San Francisco has, you can stack it up against pretty much every team in the league. There are some really complete teams in the NFC, even if the QBs aren’t as prominent.”

Valuable odds to examine

The odds on who will win NFL MVP bring the quarterback factor into focus and reflect the perceived conference imbalance more clearly than do the Super Bowl odds. The 13 candidates with the shortest odds are all quarterbacks (with Titans running back Derrick Henry 14th). By longest odds available on each player as of Wednesday morning, here are those 13 QBs and their conferences:

The best young quarterbacks are almost all in the AFC. If the league redrafted everyone right now, Mahomes, Allen, Herbert, and Burrow would, in some order, almost certainly be the first four picks. With Wilson switching conferences and Watson staying in the AFC after his year off — not to mention the presence of the unanimous MVP pick in 2019 in Jackson, while the NFC’s top three QBs will be between the ages of 34 and 45 when the season begins — this position is tipping overwhelmingly in the AFC’s favor.

“I can’t recall a time when the quarterbacks were this lopsided to one conference,” Murray said. “And it goes all the way down to last year’s draft — the No. 1 and No. 2 picks were both quarterbacks (Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson, respectively), and they both play in the AFC too, and they’re not even mentioned when we go through these lists. The NFL MVP from 2016 was just traded to an AFC team, and he’s probably not in the top 10 of the AFC QBs. So, the QB depth in the AFC right now, relative to the NFC, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Yes, there’s already a Super Bowl spread

It’s only March, but you can already bet on the Super Bowl with a point spread at SuperBook. They don’t know what teams will be there yet, but at their mobile sportsbook — which is available in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Jersey — the TBD AFC representative is a 1.5-point favorite and a -125 option on the moneyline.

Murray explained to US Bets how that line was derived.

“You take whoever the best teams, in your opinion, are, and you ask, ‘What do you think the line would be if they were in the Super Bowl?’ Right now, we have Buffalo as slightly the best team in the NFL. This is very speculative. That could absolutely change — it almost definitely will change. But Buffalo is the one AFC team that does have a pretty easy path to the playoffs, they certainly should win that division, and, if anything, all these quarterback trades to the AFC actually help Buffalo, because now those North and West teams are going to be beating each other up all year, and it really gives Buffalo the inside track to that No. 1 seed.

“And we would make Buffalo a small favorite over the best teams in the NFC, so right now, the AFC is a small favorite. But that’s a very speculative market, and that will change. It’s very fluid, that line.”

To Mays, a line like that narrowly favoring the AFC makes sense.

“Buffalo and the Chiefs are rightfully at the top of that conversation, but I think that the Packers and the Bucs are probably right there with both of those teams, and the Rams and Niners aren’t far behind. I can understand the line, because there are more teams in the AFC that we think are Super Bowl-worthy, but in the end, the team that comes out of the NFC is probably going to be just as strong as the team that comes out of that AFC, as long as it’s among those teams. Of course, if we have a weird year like we just had, where it’s a pair of 4-seeds reaching the Super Bowl, it’s a different conversation.

“But remember, the team that just won the Super Bowl is in the NFC, and they’re bringing back a good chunk of that core. And the Packers, even without Adams, have a really good roster. This is a team that got the No. 1 seed in the NFC last year without arguably the best left tackle in football and a top-five corner, and had to play in the playoffs without both of those guys. And they have two first-round picks and two second-round picks now. They’re still going to be really good.”

Interestingly, SuperBook’s biggest Super Bowl liability, as of the beginning of spring, isn’t on any of the teams in either conference with a superstar quarterback.

“Our biggest liability, by a considerable margin, is Tennessee,” Murray said, noting that he thinks much of that action was based on speculation that Rodgers might go the Titans and take Ryan Tannehill’s job.

Instead, Rodgers stayed in the NFC, where it should be easier to make the playoffs and easier to reach the Super Bowl — and you can speculate or bet beyond that point at your own peril.

Photo: Denny Medley/USA TODAY