2026 NFL Futures Deep Dive Part 2

Jul 14

Who we’re betting for division, conference, and Super Bowl winner and why

The way I am reading this board, the edges are not scattered noise, they group into three stories. First, a set of division favorites in muddled or top heavy divisions where the market is spreading the probability too evenly and my sim is concentrating it on one team. That is GB, TB, BUF and JAX. Second, two elite defense teams my numbers like for a deep run but not to win their own division, because they are stuck behind a better team. That is SEA and HOU, and the fact that I fade their division while backing their conference is the whole point, not a contradiction. Third, the fade side, led by KC, where the market is still paying full price on the name.

I want to be upfront that these are signals to explore, not closed cases. A few of them fight with each other, and a few fight with FTN, and I am going to point that out as I go instead of pretending the card is cleaner than it is. The division edges are the robust part. The conference and Super Bowl edges are thinner and I trust them less, for reasons I get into at the bottom.

One housekeeping note before the table. All of these numbers come out of the same engine as the rest of our output this year, the season sim built on our power ratings and QB values, then blended with the outside systems. If any of the sim or blend talk below is new to you, read the Methods writeup first, that is where the whole thing is laid out. This card is futures only, division, conference, and Super Bowl. The four season win total bets are their own card, the Win Totals writeup, and two teams here, Kansas City and Indianapolis, show up on both.

Quick reference on the plays I actually like, plus the one big fade:

Division

Green Bay to win the NFC North (+270)

Same read as before. The market is not taking a strong stance in this division, everything is within about 2 games and all four teams are bunched. My number has GB right around 40% to win it while the market is only pricing about 27% at +270, so I think I am right closer to 2 in 5 than the 1 in 4 the price implies. From a roster talent standpoint GB is basically on par with CHI and MIN, nothing separates them on paper, so the lean is not coming from talent, it is coming from the sim and from the pieces I trust. FTN backs the general shape here. They have GB as a perennial contender with a top 10 QB in Love and a top 10 playcaller in LaFleur, and they make the point that the NFC North has become a murderer's row, GB is 8th in out of division wins over the last three years even though they are only 13th in total wins. Adding Parsons to that front only helps the case. If he plays.

Here is where I argue against myself. The specific part of this bet is GB over DET, and that is the part FTN does not love. They had DET third in the entire league in DVOA last year even though the record was 9-8 and they technically finished last in the division. So the market making DET the favorite at +180 is defensible on underlying quality, and my sim ranking GB ahead of a team I project for almost a full win more, DET at 10.5 versus GB at 9.7, is the aggressive part of the position. I still lean GB as the one team in this cluster I want, but I would frame this as a bet that the division is live and wide open, more than a bet that GB is clearly the best team in it. You can run the same logic for CHI or MIN, it is wide open and any of them are takeable. My numbers just get there a bit more clearly with GB. One note, all of my forecasts already bake in Murray for MIN.

Tampa Bay to win the NFC South (+185)

This one is cleaner in structure. The NFC South is soft, I have TB at 8.6 wins and nobody else in the division above 7.6, with ATL at 7.6, NO at 7.2 and CAR at 6.9. So this is a best of a weak group bet. My sim has TB just under 45% to win it while the market is pricing about 35% at +185. The floor here is the offensive line, which is ranked 4th, the one thing on this roster that is clearly good, and a good line is exactly what keeps a mediocre team from cratering.

The argument against is the quarterback and the coordinator carousel. 2025 was Baker's worst year in Tampa, 21st in DYAR after finishing third the year before, and this is now the third straight offseason they have lost an offensive coordinator, with Zac Robinson coming over from Atlanta. So the bet is not that TB is good, it is that TB is the least broken team in a broken division and the market is spreading the division equity too evenly. I am comfortable with that framing at +185. I am much less comfortable if you try to talk yourself into TB being a real NFC contender, my conference number on them is tiny and I would leave that alone.

Buffalo to win the AFC East (-125)

This is the highest projected team of the value group, I have BUF at 10.76 wins with the market at 10.5, and the AFC East behind them is barren, NE at 9.7 and then a cliff to NYJ and MIA in the mid 5s. Allen is the number 1 QB in our qb numbers, the offense travels anywhere. My number is about 65% to win the division while the market is about 56% at -125.

Two honest points on this one. First, -125 is chalk, so even though the probability edge looks like 9 points, the EV in odds terms is a lot more modest than the plus money division bets. You are paying juice on a team everyone already respects. And if I zoom out and look only at my sims, ignoring the market and the other analytical systems, Buffalo grades out as the best team. I want to believe it too, but as a money making endeavor it has to be a pass. Vibes do not pay the (Buffalo) bills. This is a division only bet and I want to be clear about that. Unfortunately, once you take into account all the other information available, the conference edge is barely positive and the Super Bowl edge is actually negative. So if you back them to win the East, do not let the price on a deep run tempt you.

Jacksonville to win the AFC South (+245)

This is the most speculative of the four division plays and I want to say that clearly. My sim has the AFC South as basically a coin flip at the top, I have JAX at 38% and HOU at 39, while the market has HOU clearly ahead and JAX at only 29% at +245. So the entire bet is that the market has the gap between these two too wide. FTN supports the soft part of this, they say a team like JAX is significantly more likely than not to make the playoffs in the 14 team era, so the floor is real.

Now the problems, and there are a couple. My own win projection actually has JAX a hair under their market win total, I am on the under side of 9.5 for them. So I am simultaneously saying they win fewer than 9.5 games and that they are near co-favorites to win the division, which only holds together if you believe the division is genuinely that tight at the top. FTN is also lukewarm on the ceiling, they call JAX good but not top level and knock the offseason inaction and the roster attrition. And the team I am compressing them up toward, Houston, is a squad FTN calls the best Texans team ever by DVOA. So this bet lives entirely on trusting my division sim to close a gap that both the market and the FTN qualitative read want to keep open. I would treat this as my smallest of the four and the first one I drop if I am trimming exposure. To make matters worse, we are also saying Indianapolis is likely an 8 win team, and that IND read is its own play, the over 7.5 in the Win Totals writeup, so them being a little better than the market does not help either. I think you are seeing a very specific pathway show up in the numbers here. If Lawrence plays well, and if HOU and IND do not improve, and if TEN keeps being one of the worst teams in the league, they win, and the numbers show that happens a little more often than the market is pricing. But it is not a bet for me. Sorry, DUUUVAL.

Conference and Super Bowl

The interesting thing on the deep run markets is that the two teams my numbers like are both teams I do not like to win their own division. That is not a contradiction, it is the setup. Both are good teams stuck behind a better team in their own division, so the division price is dead but the conference and Super Bowl prices are soft.

Seattle to win the NFC (+600) and the Super Bowl (+1200)

This is the one I trust most on the deep run side. I have SEA at about 18% to win the NFC against a market around 14 percent, and about 11% to win it all against a market around 8 percent, so there is a real edge on both prices. The engine is the defense, their roster is ranked 2nd in the secondary and 5th in the front seven, and DVOA is openly bullish. They put the 2025 Seahawks on the all time DVOA leaderboard and make the point that nobody lands on that list as a one year fluke, every team on it was at the start or end of a long contending run, and they think SEA is at the start of one.

The negative division number is not a bug either. They are blocked by the Rams, who are the single best roster in the league and a team I have at 11.1 wins. So you do not bet SEA to win the West, you bet them to win the NFC or the Super Bowl where the number has not caught up to how good the team actually is. Of all the signals on this board, this is the one where the model, the talent, and the qualitative all point the same direction, and that is rare.

Houston to win the AFC (+1000) and the Super Bowl (+2000)

Biggest single edge on the conference board, I have HOU at about 15 % to win the AFC against a market of only 9 % at +1000. The case is the same shape as Seattle, elite defense, 1st in both the front seven and the secondary, and DVOA calls the unit maybe the premier defense in the league and young on top of it. The AFC was wide open last year, DVOA notes HOU went into the postseason with about the same title odds as anyone in the conference, so the path is real.

I am going to push back on my own number harder here than anywhere else. The offensive line is ranked 31st, near the bottom of the league, and that is the exact failure mode that kills deep runs in January when you run into a real pass rush. This is not theoretical, it already happened. CJ Stroud set the all time record for lowest passing DYAR in a single postseason last year, the offense went from functional to frozen the moment it mattered. On top of that, my win projection on HOU is leaning heavily on DVOA, which has them at 11.3 wins as a clear outlier while FPI has them at 9.2, so if you strip DVOA the team looks more like a 9.5 win group than an 11 win group. So yes it is the biggest nominal edge, but it is also the one with the most concentrated downside. I would take Houston to the conference at a smaller size than Seattle, and I would be cautious stacking the Super Bowl ticket on top given the line and the Stroud postseason evidence.

The fade side, since this is supposed to explore both directions

The board is not all buys. The biggest sell on it is Kansas City, and it is not close. My numbers fade KC across the board, division, conference and Super Bowl are all negative, the division is roughly minus 11 points against the market. FTN's chapter lines up with the fade almost point for point. The 2024 Chiefs went 11-0 in one score games, the 2025 Chiefs went 1-9, that is the kind of luck reversal that usually tells you the prior year was propped up. They traded McDuffie away so the secondary is thinner, the run game was among the worst in the league at creating yards, and the defense is basically Chris Jones and role players now. The market is still paying full contender price on the name. That is the definition of a spot I want to be on the other side of.

One thing to tie together, since it looks like a split if you read the two cards side by side. The season win total under on KC, the one over in the Win Totals writeup, is the cautious and narrow version of this same fade. That bet only needs them to miss 11 wins and it leans on Mahomes health, so it is closer, and I flagged it that way there. These deep run markets are where the name premium is fattest, so this is where I am comfortable being against them rather than just nibbling.

I would put NE and DET in the softer fade bucket, for the same structural reason as the buys, the market is spreading division probability too evenly. NE has a top 6 roster but is stuck behind Buffalo, and the market pricing them close to the Bills is where my number disagrees. DET is the flip side of the GB bet, and I already covered that the market making them the North favorite is actually defensible on DVOA, so I am not strongly fading DET, I am just taking GB over them inside a tight division.

Close buy no cigar

I totally get wanting some long odds futures bets, but the reason we try not to give out a lot is that they lose so much of the time. It is really hard to reliably call the +2000 Super Bowl champion. And hey, we have done a good job since we started, we gave out the Rams, Philly, Philly, SF, and BAL, and also the Jets (yes, the season Aaron Rodgers played five snaps) and Detroit the year they missed the playoffs. You are up money, but it is very hard to do and get right season after season. Then there is the hedging so you can lock up profit. It is just a sloppy way to get alpha. I would rather you bet two units on every side we give you, you are going to make more money doing that than by having me read the crystal ball to find the 10 percent edge. And all of this is in a market with double or triple the house edge. The hold on these futures markets is 10 to 15 percent, versus the 4 percent on a normal side or total.

I can see a real pathway for HOU and SEA, but it is really hard for me to give these out knowing how much has to go right to maybe make three units. Same with the division bets. So take that into account before you place them. Nothing on this sheet will show up on any log, because it is not something we can give you and know with high certainty that we are going to win. To be frank, almost no service can do that. But I hope you can tell how much work we put into pricing and thinking about these so that the number we give you is a really good forecast of what will likely happen. Best of luck this season, and make sure to check out the College Football futures page for more futures bets and analysis.

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Seth Anderson