Super Bowl LXI contenders: Who is likely to be on top according to recent odds
The Super Bowl has always been viewed as the most influential societal and economic sporting event in America, with an average of 125 million viewers each year.
The Seattle Seahawks were presumed not to be victorious in Super Bowl LX. Not really.
Even as the season progressed, Mike Macdonald's defence tightened its grip on the league with 14 regular-season wins, finishing with a +191 point differential. There lingered a perception that Seattle were merely on a winning streak rather than the inevitable champion.
And yet, by the end, their 28-13 victory over the New England Patriots felt almost rational.
Here, Sports News Blitz writer Francesca O’Callaghan dives into why the Seattle Seahawks may be entering a new era of dominance - and which franchises are best positioned to knock them off their throne for Super Bowl LXI.
Why the LA Rams still look like the league's most complete roster
This was reflected in the reaction to the 2026 NFL Draft.
Los Angeles entered draft night as Super Bowl favourites, and many predicted them to strive for an immediate-impact player capable of pushing an already stacked deck over.
Instead, they selected Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson with the 13th overall pick, signalling a team thinking simultaneously about the current and the post-Matthew Stafford future.
The decision marginally weakened their odds, shifting from +750 to +800 according to Fox Sports betting markets. But not by much.
"The Rams were dominant throughout the NFL season, and with minimal expected roster turnover and two first-round draft picks, they remain among the strongest contenders heading into 2026," Caesars Sportsbook head of football Joey Feazel told ESPN.
"With Matthew Stafford all but confirming his return, Los Angeles projects to enter the season with one of the league's best rosters and the highest probability of making a deep postseason run."
Stafford is coming off his first MVP season in 17 years, leading the league with 46 touchdown passes and 4,707 passing yards, throwing just eight interceptions all year, according to Yahoo Sports.
Sean McVay remains among the sport's premier offensive master minds as he fundamentally revised how NFL offences apply personnel, movement, and sequencing to create "the illusion of complexity."
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The unsettling reality for the NFL? Seattle may be even better
After the 2025 draft, there was optimism surrounding Grey Zabel and Nick Emmanwori, alongside Sam Darnold's exceptional late-career comeback.
Still, few anticipated the defence would become historically dominant so promptly under Macdonald.
Last season, they “tilted the field.”
They eliminated explosive plays with four defensive backs, leading to opportunities for their tight ends and one-on-one coverage.
They dictated tempo through ‘no-huddle’ usage and a 38% blitz rate to create a rapid-paced game, which in turn tired out the opposing defences.
Advanced metrics placed them among the league's best defences in both EPA per play and yards allowed, and progressively they began to resemble the kind of defence capable of sustaining a multi-year window rather than producing a one-off run.
The challenge now is psychological rather than tactical.
Every champion eventually becomes the hunted, a target on their backs.
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The second-year players who could reshape the league
Championships survive because young players pick up the pieces quicker than expected, ultimately determining who will win Super Bowl LXI.
Several franchises are now heavily reliant on second-year leaps from players drafted in 2025, and in some scenarios, those advancements could fundamentally adjust the balance of the league.
For example, the Buffalo Bills went 12-5 last season and fielded the NFL's best pass defence, but organisational turbulence followed the firing of Sean McDermott.
Jim Leonhard now inherits a team still skilled enough to compete, yet perhaps more fragile than previous iterations.
This places pressure on Maxwell Hairston.
The former first-round cornerback made only three starts as a rookie because of a pre-season knee injury, but Buffalo need him to become an actual outside presence immediately.
For all the Bills' regular-season success, one conference championship appearance in five years has increasingly created the sense of a team stuck just beneath the summit.
The Green Bay Packers face a similar predicament with Matthew Golden.
A first-round receiver finishing his rookie season without a touchdown was not remotely what the Packers envisioned.
But their offseason decisions - moving on from Romeo Doubs and trading Dontayvian Wicks - reveal considerable internal confidence that Golden is ready for a significantly larger role.
Why predicting the Super Bowl remains impossible
Basic probability suggests each franchise begins with roughly a 3.1% chance of winning the Super Bowl.
Analysts examine everything: passing efficiency, turnover differential, third-down conversion rates, total yardage and EPA models.
That unpredictability in part explains why the Super Bowl has turned into such a cultural and financial phenomenon.
Americans are expected to wager a record $1.76bn on Super Bowl LXI, according to the American Gaming Association, another sign of the sport's expanding economic reach.
Because for all the analytics, modelling and betting markets, the NFL still produces outcomes nobody entirely anticipates.
Seattle proved that last year.
The question now is whether they can do it again.
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