Doug GreenbergĀ andĀ Ben SolakCloseBen SolakESPNBen Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.Multiple AuthorsJan 30, 2026, 07:00 AM ET
play1:04What should fantasy managers do with Joe Burrow in 2026?Eric Karabell offers some advice for fantasy managers as it pertains to Joe Burrow for the 2026 season.
What should fantasy managers do with Joe Burrow in 2026?Eric Karabell offers some advice for fantasy managers as it pertains to Joe Burrow for the 2026 season.
Eric Karabell offers some advice for fantasy managers as it pertains to Joe Burrow for the 2026 season.
Which players dominated 2025 — and which ones fell short?
The crowds went wild: The most bet-on games of the season
Is there anything more disappointing than seeing that one pop song that completely infiltrated your music recaps of 2025?
The thrilling 2025 NFL regular season featured plenty of unexpected results, and bettors weren’t spared. Of the seven teams that entered the campaign with +2000 odds or shorter to win the Super Bowl, only three made the playoffs. None got to the conference championship round.
Favorites won 65.9% of their games outright and covered the spread 47.8% of the time this season, a far cry from 2024 when favorites were a historic 71.7% straight up and 53.3% against the spread. Though underdogs winning generally favors sportsbooks, bettors continued to put down big money in 2025, with DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello calling its NFL handle “off-the-charts great.”
Ahead of Super Bowl LX where the Patriots and Seahawks will face off in Santa Clara, California, in the biggest sports betting event of the year, it’s time for a look at the season behind us and how we got here, with two teams whose preseason odds were +6000 to make it to the Super Bowl.
Sports betting writer Doug Greenberg wraps up the season with a deep dive into the teams, players and games that made the 2025 NFL betting season (complete with some fun graphics), and NFL analyst Ben Solak puts some deep cuts on your radar for 2026 based on the bets you loved to make in 2025.
Bettors played the greatest hits early and often this season, with the most-bet teams representing a who’s who of buzzy franchises.
The Detroit Lions and Buffalo Bills have been perennial “on the cusp” teams that bettors wanted to believe could finally have that breakthrough season. Both squads attracted considerable Super Bowl futures action before Week 1. Then there were the actual perennial Super Bowl contenders in the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, who fell short (Eagles) and very short (Chiefs) of the league’s top prize.
Finally, the Dallas Cowboys — by far the league’s most valuable franchise at $10.1 billion, according to Forbes — maintained their influence with bettors to close out the top five. Internationally, the Cowboys attracted the second-most betting this season behind only the Chiefs, according to data from Sportradar.
The Baltimore Ravens and Chiefs, two of the most reliable teams in recent seasons, struggled throughout the 2025 campaign, making them the largest losers for bettors. The Chiefs, in particular, fell very short of expectations when favored, losing nine games straight up and failing to cover the spread in 10 games, both the most in the league.
After being among the worst value teams in 2024 (6-11), the Seahawks flipped the script in 2025, finishing with the best outright record (14-3) and tied for the best mark against the spread (12-5). Mike Macdonald’s squad was the second-most profitable for patrons at sportsbooks, just behind the resurgent Patriots, who also went 12-5 ATS.
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Chicago Bears helped savvy bettors with their impressive ATS records, tying the Atlanta Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers for the second-most outright wins as an underdog (5). The Carolina Panthers had eight outright wins as an underdog, tied for the most in a season in the Super Bowl era.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the worst ATS team in the league, but bettors wisely avoided them. On the flip side, the Lions were a mediocre 8-9 ATS, but the sheer volume of bettors backing them week-over-week made them a loss leader.
Jahmyr Gibbs, Saquon Barkley and Derrick Henry lit the NFL on fire in 2024, so their statuses as bettor go-tos in 2025 shouldn’t have been a surprise. The first two of that trio, though, failed to live up to expectations and became “loss leaders,” along with Justin Jefferson, Jalen Hurts and James Cook III.
Loss leader is defined here as the players who accounted for the most total money lost for bettors, according to a representative from BetMGM. The sportsbook notes that anytime touchdown scorer is the most-bet player prop market by handle, with over/under receiving yards coming in second and first touchdown scorer third.
Players’ abilities to get into the end zone is the most important measure for prop bets on the macro scale, and a common thread between the loss leaders is significantly fewer touchdowns than in 2024. Cook led the league in rushing with 1,621 yards, which drove his ATD price short, limiting his liability in the nine games where he did score but costing the public dearly in the eight where he didn’t.
By contrast, money leader Jauan Jennings posted a career high in touchdowns — notably, while seeing a year-over-year decrease in receiving yards — and Tucker Kraft was well on his way to career highs across the board before a season-ending ACL injury in Week 9. Jaxson Dart and Jake Tonges emerged as potential moneymakers of the future, while Darren Waller turned back the clock with his most touchdowns since 2020.
It’s no surprise that standalone island games accumulate more betting handle than Sunday afternoon contests, so prime-time matchups predictably fill the top five here.
Early-season games tended to attract more money, possibly owing to nascent optimism and fuller wallets. But several high-stakes late-season matchups also joined the ranks of the most bet, with their exciting game scripts making for ample live betting opportunities.
As the American betting market continues to mature, bettors continually flock to parlays, which give them the opportunity to win a lot of money with lower stakes. In its most recent earnings report, DraftKings noted a significant increase in year-over-year parlay handle mix.
Specifically, bettors continue to invest in same-game parlays, which have “continued to skyrocket,” Feazel said. “That’s usually what is a sweat in for us week in and week out … is when you get a really high-scoring prime-time game, all those permutations out there are going to be really good for the customers.”
Feazel also points to the emergence of division-winner future parlays as a bet type that has grown significantly year-over-year. Here are some notable ones that cashed:
Let’s wrap up this wrap-up with some of the wildest bets — by odds, stakes and winnings — of the NFL regular season.
Lots of players and teams showed flashes of brilliance and intriguing betting opportunities despite not making it to the Super Bowl — or even the playoffs. Or even through the whole season.
But with the right ingredients — whether it be a revamped coaching staff, better weapons or more reps — these are the early plays to have a great 2026 at the books.
I was big on fading the Commanders coming off of their highly improbable 2024 season in which they were historically successful on fourth downs and went 8-4 in one-score games. They had a lightning strike of a quarterback in Jayden Daniels, but his play was far too erratic to fully trust.
I have more faith in the 2025 Bears as a stable organization, as I rank Ben Johnson extremely highly among NFL head coaches and I think Caleb Williams’ 2025 success is much more repeatable than Daniels’ in 2024. With that said, the Bears eked out their 11-6 record and divisional round appearance on the back of some highly unlikely wins.
Chicago went 8-5 in one-score games across the regular season and playoffs, including wins over the Commanders (on an end-of-game fumble), Raiders (on an end-of-game blocked field goal), Bengals (on a last-minute heroic touchdown from Colston Loveland), Packers (thanks to a fourth-down touchdown to send the game to overtime). The Bears sent the divisional round game against the Rams to overtime on an unreal Cole Kmet touchdown on fourth down.
It’s simply extremely difficult to maintain that level of end-of-game success, even if the Bears improve as a team overall entering 2026. Another team with a similar candidacy? The Broncos, who were 11-2 in one-score games during the regular season.
If you enjoyed betting on the Patriots or 49ers in 2025, you’ll love betting on the Bengals and Saints in 2026
What should fantasy managers do with Joe Burrow in 2026?
Two of the easiest schedules last year belonged to the Patriots — as has been extensively covered in their Super Bowl run — and the 49ers. As such, they were two of the heaviest-bet teams for overs on preseason win totals.
It’s not yet clear who will have the easiest schedules in 2026. To get those numbers pinned down, we won’t use the 2025 record for each team but rather 2026 win total projections (which don’t exist yet), and we need to see the travel/rest disparities across each team’s schedule. Still, we can be fairly confident which teams will generally have easier schedules down the stretch.
The Bengals and the Saints are the teams I’m looking at here. They have the second- and third-easiest schedules by 2025 win/loss records of their opponents. They both have reason to believe they’ll be at least functional in 2026: the Bengals because they have Joe Burrow, and the Saints because they finished the season 4-1 and look secured in their quarterbacking future with Tyler Shough.
The 49ers weren’t as great of a bet against the spread (10-7) as they were for seasonlong win performance, as they easily cleared their preseason number despite enduring huge injuries. The Patriots, however, always stayed ahead of the Vegas curve. They were tied with the Rams, Seahawks and Jaguars for the best record against the spread (12-5) this regular season.