Detroit Lions open with best Super Bowl odds in NFC North, among top 11 overall

ALLEN PARK -- The Detroit Lions opened last season with the longest Super Bowl odds in the league. Just like the season before that. And the one before that. It has been a long, oh, half-century or so eh?

But the times, they are a’changin’. And so are the odds.

The Lions’ Super Bowl VLIII odds have opened as high as ninth on FanDuel (+2500) and BetMGM (+2500), while they’re 11th over at DraftKings (+3000). That’s a lot of belief in a team that didn’t even make the playoffs this past season. In fact, Detroit has the best Super Bowl odds of any non-playoff team in the league at FanDuel and BetMGM, while they trail only the New York Jets at DraftKings.

The Kansas City Chiefs stand alone as the Super Bowl favorites heading into next season, according to all the major domestic books. No surprise there. They’ve appeared in three of the last four Super Bowls after all, won two of them, and have made the AFC championship game in every season with Patrick Mahomes under center. Mahomes was just named Super Bowl MVP for his heroics in leading a comeback from a double-digit deficit against Philadelphia on Sunday night, all of which came on the heels of a second MVP season.

He’s 27 years old.

In an era where young stars like Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Tua Tagovailoa have risen up, Mahomes stands alone as the single most unstoppable force in the league. As long as that guy remains healthy and in his prime, Kansas City is going to remain a difficult out for the Lions and everyone else.

But the good news is all those young quarterbacks play in the AFC. The path to the Super Bowl is much more clear in the NFC these days, where Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles now reign, but there’s a dropoff after that. That’s especially true in the NFC North, where the Chicago Bears were the worst team in the league this past season, while Aaron Rodgers says he needs to spend a few days in the dark before deciding whether he even wants to return to Green Bay, or return to football at all.

Either way, Detroit just swept Green Bay anyway. Detroit also nearly swept the division champion Vikings too, coughing up a double-digit lead in Minnesota before pulling away for a victory at Ford Field. The Lions finished 5-1 against the North, won eight of their last 10 games overall, and they did it while playing with the youngest roster in the league. Now with almost their entire young core back next season, plus armed with four picks in the first two rounds of the draft -- two of which are in the first round, one of which is at No. 6 -- and plenty of money to spend in free agency, it’s easy to understand why the books are so bullish on the Lions’ future. They just might be the favorites to win the division, despite not winning the division since 1993.

Detroit has opened with the best Super Bowl odds in the North according to all the books.

The times, they really are a’changin’.

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