The Rams were Super Bowl favorites. Now they're fighting a 30-year curse

It happens every year. A team lights the NFL world on fire with Super Bowl hope and expectation in the preseason, only to flop and fall short of a Lombardi once the season begins. And by “it happens every year,” we literally mean it happens every year.

The Los Angeles Rams entered the 2026 season as +500 — that is, 5-1 — Super Bowl favorites. You know what’s happened since — the Rams are currently 2-4, victims of injury and curiously bad performances. A Super Bowl is still very much in play, but if Los Angeles ends up failing to win it all, they’ll join an illustrious lineage. 

As Yahoo Sports senior betting analyst Ben Fawkes notes, not one of the teams in the past 30 years that began the season with +500 or better odds to win the Super Bowl actually ended up winning. Twenty teams began the year with those kinds of favorable conditions, and all twenty failed to close the deal. Some failed early, some only fell short in the final seconds of the Super Bowl. 

Here’s the full list:

For instance, everyone knew the 2007 Patriots were absolutely loaded, which is why they went off at +250 and won every game right up until they faced the Giants in the Super Bowl. The 2014 Seahawks (+450) were coming off a Super Bowl victory and were poised to grab another, right up until the Patriots’ Malcolm Butler intervened. Most recently, the 2024 Chiefs (+500) bulldozed their way through the regular season with a 15-2 record, and cruised right up until they ran out of gas against the Eagles in the Super Bowl. 

There are two factors at play here. First is the inherent unpredictability of football. A team getting +500 odds before the season even begins only actually has an implied probability of 16.67 percent of winning the Super Bowl. And as any Patriots fan who remembers Manning-to-Tyree or the Philly Special can tell you, there’s no such thing as certain Super Bowl victory before kickoff. 

“It's one of the things that bettors and the fans love about the NFL,” Fawkes says. “If it was that easy, then everyone would just bet on the favorite and collect their winnings at +500, +400, +300. And a lot of people would be living on small, nice islands.”

The second factor is the alchemy in how preseason odds are calculated. Sportsbooks, analysts, columnists and fans alike all begin with a baseline of expectation based on prior-year results. Teams that were good last year, assuming no major personnel losses, will likely be good again this year. It’s then that group psychology takes over; when bettors begin flocking to one team over all others, sportsbooks will adjust the line accordingly to protect themselves. 

“The true chances (of winning) aren't necessarily the odds that are being offered,” Fawkes says. “Especially with a team with a lot of public groundswell and support like the Rams, oddsmakers are going to bump those up even more.”

Looking over that list of preseason Super Bowl favorites that fell short, you can spot this obvious trend: bettors flocking to familiar teams, whether it’s Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs, Tom Brady’s Patriots or the mid-2010s Legion of Boom Seahawks. Familiarity draws money. 

Sportsbooks try to limit their exposure to significant losses by lowering the odds of notable or often-bet teams; it’s why LeBron James’ 76ers have low odds now, and why Tiger Woods had low odds every time he entered a tournament even when he was hardly able to walk the course.

The teams that come out of nowhere — the Kurt Warner-led Rams of 1999, for instance, or the Nick Foles-led Eagles back in 2017 — are the ones that pay off, simply because they’re so unexpected. (According to BetMGM, this year’s largest liabilities for sportsbooks are the Raiders, Steelers and Browns, should any of them manage an improbable Super Bowl win.) 

As always, it’s worth remembering that casinos don’t get built because they lose money: 

The Rams specifically ended up in this situation because of a confluence of factors; the team may well have been the best in the league last year, falling just four points short of a Super Bowl appearance. The addition of Myles Garrett only bolstered their chances, in theory, leading bettors to flock to the Rams. 

On the day before the 2026 season opened, according to BetMGM, Rams Super Bowl futures led the NFL in both ticket percentage (9.5 percent) and handle (money wagered, 15.7 percent). That potential liability had moved the line from its opening at +900 to +500. Today, that line stands at +1200, although the Rams still have the second-highest ticket and handle percentages, behind Buffalo. (Your current leader: San Francisco at +550.) 

The reasons for the Rams’ sudden downfall include injuries and a corresponding lack of depth, concerns that look obvious in retrospect but minimal in the moment. There’s still plenty of time for Los Angeles to get itself back on the right track and validate the faith of those many preseason bettors, but if the Rams can’t pull it off, they’ll join some notable company.