Key Betting Trends For Super Bowl 56
When you’re trying to win Super Bowl bets, any piece of advice you get can be a big help, and following the betting trends can be a great way to help you decide whether to back the Cincinnati Bengals or the L.A. Rams in Super Bowl 56. With the NFL’s championship game dating back to 1967, there’s plenty of historical data available for this sporting event that you can use to help you maximize your chances to come out ahead on this year’s Super Bowl. Here are a few trends that you should know about Super Bowl LVI to hopefully help you finish in the money when Super Sunday comes to a close.
Cincinnati Bengals
The Bengals are hot right now, as they’ve managed to win six of their past seven games straight up and covered all seven of those games. If you’ve bet on Cincinnati this season, you’ve been pretty happy with your return, as they’ve gone 13-7 ATS and are 8-3 ATS as underdogs on the year. Backing the Bengals to win straight up as an underdog has come with plenty of profits lately, as Cincinnati has been an underdog in five of its past seven contests and won the game on four occasions.
However, the odds haven’t been in your favor over the Bengals’ three playoff games if you’ve been expecting Joe Burrow to light up the scoreboard the way he did in college. All of Cincinnati’s postseason contests have gone under the number, despite the Bengals facing a strong running game in Tennessee and the Chiefs’ prolific passing attack.
If you like to live bet and wait for your odds, Cincinnati is the team for you. In four of their past five games, going back to the regular season, the Bengals faced an early deficit, making them bigger underdogs on the live betting option. On three occasions (with the fourth being a meaningless game with Cleveland to close the regular season), the Bengals came back to win, resulting in a nice payout for anyone who backed the underdogs on the moneyline.
Special teams lovers have another reason to back the Bengals: Evan McPherson. Cincinnati’s kicker has scored the Bengals’ first points in two of three playoff games, so if they get the ball first, a field goal as the first score might be the play.
Los Angeles Rams
When it comes to totals, you won’t find much consistency with the Los Angeles Rams. Los Angeles has been consistently inconsistent throughout the regular season and its three postseason games, as the total has yo-yoed for the Rams’ past 11 games. Given that the under cashed in the most recent contest, this trend points to the over. During that stretch, none of the team’s overs have failed to hit 50 points, so the odds are in your favor if you want to sell two points and try to bet for a greater payout.
If you’re the kind of NFL bettor who likes to get something in for the first half and get out, backing the Rams to score the first points of the Super Bowl makes sense. In both the regular season and the playoffs, the Rams consistently beat their opponents to get the game’s first score. This team scored the first points of the game in six of their past seven contests, and in five of their past seven, it led after a quarter.
Conversely, the Bengals don’t really start all that quickly. The divisional round against Tennessee was the only time that Joe Burrow and company have scored first in their past five contests. Cincinnati is more of a second-half team, so it’s a sensible play to back L.A. to score first in this Super Bowl.
Considering this franchise has started Kurt Warner in two of its four prior Super Bowls, it’s a bit surprising that the Los Angeles Rams have never scored more than 23 points in a Super Bowl. Matthew Stafford has found the later rounds to his liking in his first trip past the wild card round in his NFL career, topping 300 yards in both of his past two playoff games. But he threw for less than 300 in five of six games before that, making his over 279.5 passing yards risky.
Historical Betting Trends For The Big Game
Don’t Bother Taking the Points
One of the biggest things to remember for this final NFL game of the season is that there’s virtually no value in backing the underdog on the point spread. In 55 years of Super Bowl history, only six have seen the underdog cover the spread but fail to win the Super Bowl. Conversely, the underdog has won the Super Bowl 19 times, more than three times as often as they’ve covered but failed to win. That’s why you won’t see many handicapping experts taking the points with Cincinnati; odds are high that if you win your bet, they’ll beat Los Angeles and you’ll have left money on the table.
Last year was another great example, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 3-point underdogs against the Kansas City Chiefs but blew the Chiefs out in a 31-9 win. That gives an overwhelming outright wins advantage to the underdog in Super Bowls, so if you like the Bengals to cover the point spread, you’re likely better off backing the underdogs to win the Super Bowl.
On the other side of the coin, if you like the Rams to win the big game, don’t worry about making a bet on the moneyline. Historically, the key number in a Super Bowl is seven, as no team has been favored by less than seven points and failed to cover in a winning effort. There’s always a chance that these two teams could make history, but the trends say that teams with a slight edge either cover the number or lose the game outright. If you like the LA Rams, bet them to have covered the point spread. If you like the Cincinnati Bengals, bet on them as the outright winner of Super Bowl LVI.
Don’t Wait on the Line
Thanks to the horror story of Super Bowl XIII, you shouldn’t worry about the line moving. That game between Dallas and Pittsburgh serves as a cautionary tale for sportsbooks because it’s one of the worst Super Bowls for them in NFL history.
Why? The books set the line at Steelers -4.5, and betting experts jumped on the underdogs and the points. The bookies took that at a sign that they’d been too generous and knocked a point off the line, causing a surplus of bets on the Steelers at -3.5. Of course, this Super Bowl ended in a four-point win for the Steelers, meaning both bets were covered and both sides ended up cashing their tickets.
Thanks to this nightmare, NFL sportsbooks have been cautious about moving a Super Bowl line ever since that game. There’s a chance that the line can move if a lot of bets come in on one side, but odds are that it won’t happen because a move toward the Bengals would make it a key number plus a hook. Unless you see some juicy bonus offers for you to bet on Sunday itself, grab your number for Super Bowl LVI as soon as you see something you like.
Does the Regular Season Matter?
One common claim surrounding Super Bowl LVI is that the regular season is meaningless because both of these teams were the No. 4 seed in their conferences, making this the first Super Bowl ever without a top-three seed. There’s a kernel of truth in this complaint because, in the past 16 years, the team with the better record during the season lost the Super Bowl.
The only two teams in the past 16 years to buck this trend were the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl 43 against the Arizona Cardinals and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 51 against the Atlanta Falcons. If you believe this trend will continue, you’ll want to go against the Rams in Super Bowl LVI.
There’s another reason this Super Bowl betting trend favors the Bengals: when teams make a Super Bowl appearance after winning 10 games or less, they come through in the big game. Out of the past five teams that won 10 games or less but found their way into the Super Bowl, four of them won the game against the team with the overwhelming outright wins advantage.
The one team that didn’t? The aforementioned Cardinals, who were underdogs that at least managed to cover the number in defeat. If you’ve done the math, you know that the 10-or-less teams hold a 5-0 ATS mark in the Super Bowl, making this a trend worth considering. If you like this trend, that leads you to the underdog Bengals.
Odds Are Against the NFC West
Old-time fans of the Bengals are probably thrilled that they’re seeing Los Angeles instead of San Francisco in the Super Bowl, as they remember all too well watching Joe Montana lead the San Francisco 49ers to narrow wins over Cincinnati in two Super Bowls in the 1980s. But since the turn of the century, the NFC West hasn’t gotten the job done when it mattered most.
Since the Rams won their one Super Bowl title in 1999 (back when they were in St. Louis), the AFC has pummeled the NFC West in the championship game. Bettors who have backed AFC teams against the NFC West have gone 7-1 since 2000, as they’ve seen San Francisco lose to the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs, the Seattle Seahawks fall to the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots, the Cardinals let one slip away against the Steelers and the Rams lose twice to the Patriots.
The Bengals, on the other hand, come from the AFC North. The North is 4-1 in the Super Bowl since 2000, with the Steelers and the Ravens each claiming two world championships.
The Trend of White Jerseys
This trend is mentioned only for entertainment purposes as opposed to statistical analysis. But it’s fun to discuss: just three of the past 17 teams that won the Super Bowl did so in their dark jerseys.
What makes this even stranger is that despite this trend, few teams choose to wear white in the Super Bowl. Only seven of 56 home teams (NFC teams are home in odd years, AFC teams in even years) in Super Bowl history chose to wear white. Of those seven, three were because the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Commanders traditionally wear white at home.
The other four, however, believed it would increase the odds in their favor. Wearing white worked for the Steelers in Super Bowl XL, the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50, and the Buccaneers last year. The only exception was New England, who chose white because Tom Brady had a 3-0 record in Super Bowls wearing white at the time.
And that’s why this trend should only be viewed for entertainment purposes: Brady was 5-1 in his NFL career wearing white in the Super Bowl, but it probably had a lot more to do with his talent than his jersey color.