The Denver Broncos face long odds to win the Super Bowl.
That is if you believe the oddsmakers over at Caesars Sportsbook. The odds for every team are outlined in this ESPN post by Joe Klingele.
The Broncos have missed the playoffs in each of the last four seasons and are coming off of a 7-9 campaign, but there is plenty to be excited about in 2020. The oddsmakers don’t see it that way.
The Broncos are listed ay 50-1 to win the Super Bowl, which is worse than the Las Vegas Raiders (30-1) and the Los Angeles Chargers (45-1). The Broncos are tied with the Raiders at 10-1 for the worst odds to win the division and the team is projected to win 7.5 games in 2020.
That would be only a slight improvement over last season and most Broncos fans are not going to see things that way.
The season finished in a positive light with the play of Drew Lock. In addition to that, the Broncos have signed Melvin Gordon and traded for both A.J. Bouye and Jurrell Casey since the season ended.
The offense should be much better this coming season and the defense has a chance to be excellent in year two of Vic Fangio’s system. So why does the team face such long odds for success?
These oddsmakers are likely not sold on Lock, who has just five career starts under his belt. They may not see Garett Bolles and Ja’Wuan James as a particularly great combination at the tackle spots. They may just feel like Fangio is not the right guy to lead the ship.
It could be a lot of things.
But if you look at the glass half full, you see an offense that has a chance to be explosive, particularly if the team drafts a top wide receiver in the draft. You’ll see a defense with the ability t shut down opponents and you see an organization that is tired of losing and wants to get back to where it is supposed to be.
Those things probably weren’t taken into consideration by the oddsmakers, but they will be by Broncos fans. However, looking at all of the odds, these oddsmakers didn’t really go out on much of a limb.
Here are their projected division winners:
AFC East: Buffalo Bills
AFC North: Baltimore Ravens
AFC South: Tennessee Titans
AFC West: Kansas City Chiefs
NFC East: Dallas Cowboys
NFC North: Minnesota Vikings
NFC South: New Orleans Saints
NFC West: San Francisco 49ers
Based on the odds, the Chiefs (4-1) and 49ers (7-1) are the favorites to meet in the Super Bowl, which of course would be the same two teams that battled for the Lombardi Trophy last season.
Only three teams in the AFC (Cincinnati Bengals, Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars) were given worse odds to win the Super Bowl than the Broncos. Clearly, the team has to make believers out of a lot of people out there this coming season.