Is there any chance Nick Daicos, the biggest favourite in modern Brownlow Medal history, won’t win in 2026?

Well, the previous biggest favourite almost didn’t.

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Dustin Martin’s epic 2017 season, widely proclaimed as one of the best in V/AFL history, had him as an almost-unbackable $1.05 favourite entering that year’s count.

But Patrick Dangerfield – the previous year’s winner by a whopping nine votes – came close to going back-to-back, polling 33 votes and drawing level with Martin in Round 23.

The Richmond great still won it, thanks to his 11th three-vote haul of the year. But there was at least some drama.

MORE BROWNLOW PREVIEWS

ULTIMATE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the 2026 count

ROUND-BY-ROUND: Monster cheat sheet for the EIGHT players who should poll best

WHAT TIME DOES IT START? All the relevant times you need to know

The AFL will be hoping the same scenario plays out on Monday night, with a rival star at least keeping Daicos honest. Because there’s a very real chance Andrew Dillon will be going into speed-reading mode with four or five rounds left, once Daicos clinches Charlie.

Daicos is an astonishingly short $1.02 favourite to win the 2026 Brownlow Medal, after going into the last three counts as the predicted winner and polling an astonishing 98 votes between them but failing to salute.

Does the Brownlow favourite usually win?

2026: Favourite Nick Daicos ($1.02)

2025: Winner Matt Rowell ($13), favourite Nick Daicos ($2.50)

2024: Winner Patrick Cripps ($2.50), joint-favourite with Nick Daicos

2023: Winner Lachie Neale ($13), favourites Nick Daicos and Marcus Bontempelli ($2.75)

2022: Winner Patrick Cripps ($5.50), favourite Lachie Neale ($3)

2021: Winner and favourite Ollie Wines ($3.20)

2020: Winner and favourite Lachie Neale ($1.20)

2019: Winner Nat Fyfe ($7), favourite Patrick Dangerfield ($2.40)

2018: Winner and favourite Tom Mitchell ($1.50)

2017: Winner and favourite Dustin Martin ($1.05)

2016: Winner and favourite Patrick Dangerfield ($1.16)

2015: Winner and favourite Nat Fyfe ($2)

2014: Winner Matt Priddis ($17), favourite Joel Selwood ($2.50)

2013: Winner and favourite Gary Ablett ($1.90)

2012: Winner Jobe Watson* ($5.50), favourite Gary Ablett ($4)

2011: Winner Dane Swan ($11), favourite Chris Judd ($1.90)

2010: Winner Chris Judd ($17), favourite Dane Swan ($2.25)

The favourite has won eight of the last 16 Brownlows

Current odds via Pointsbet and accurate as of 1pm Tuesday

Daicos was the fourth player in history to poll 100 or more Brownlow votes in his first 100 home and away games, joining Haydn Bunton senior, Dick Reynolds and Nat Fyfe – who won eight Brownlows between them.

Surely things won’t be so awkward for Nick Daicos this year… (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

So, to be clear, it’s not as if Daicos has been polling poorly. He has simply not won a Brownlow yet because other players keep polling ridiculously well.

Lachie Neale (31 votes) pipped Marcus Bontempelli (29) and Daicos (28) in 2023, after Daicos missed the final few weeks of the season and the Lions champion went 3-3 in the last two rounds. It was an upset, with Neale at $13 pre-count, but the vote totals were reasonable.

That was the last normal Brownlow we’ve had.

Patrick Cripps winning with 45 votes in 2024 was absurd – Daicos polled 38 votes – but at least the pair were joint-favourites going into the night.

Last year, Matt Rowell combined the odds of Neale ($13) with the absurd over-polling of Cripps. The Gold Coast midfield bull found around 14 votes more than expected by the excellent Wheelo Ratings projection system, finishing on 39, while Daicos polled 32 when he’d been expected to hit around 35 votes.

We will need something even more absurd for Daicos not to win the 2026 Brownlow.

WHO CAN POSSIBLY CATCH HIM?

Only four players are better than $101 to win this year – Daicos ($1.02), Marcus Bontempelli ($41), Bailey Smith ($51) and Patrick Cripps ($67).

If you convert those odds into implied probabilities, Daicos is given a 98% chance to win, with Bontempelli at 2.4%, Smith at 2% and Cripps at 1.5%.

(The numbers don’t add up cleanly because ties are possible, and because the market is influenced by how much people are actually betting rather than being a perfect representation of everyone’s chances.)

Wheelo Ratings is even more pessimistic about an upset, giving Daicos a 99.8% chance to win, with Smith at 0.4%… and nobody else above 0%.

Their numbers have Daicos projected to poll 40 votes on the low end, and a staggering 52 votes on the high end (95% confidence interval, meaning a 95% chance his final tally will fall within that range).

Polling 52 votes would mean being best-on-ground 17 times in 22 games. Plus a cheeky one thrown in.

Smith, in contrast, has a 95% confidence range of 26 votes on the low end and 40 votes on the high end. (Bontempelli’s highest projection is 36, and Cripps’ highest is 34.)

The path to an upset would be them hitting their highest possible projection while Daicos hits his lowest possible projection. (And even then Daicos could still win in a tie.)

But if reality falls anywhere outside of those two extremes, Daicos should win.

A Bailey Smith win would be wild… and would mean one hell of a speech. (Photo by Josh Chadwick/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

It’s worth noting the last three Brownlow winners have all been in the AFL’s top two for overall clearances – the umps have loved the midfield bulls for years – with Lachie Neale (2023) and Matt Rowell (2025) ranking first, and Patrick Cripps (2024) ranking second.

This year’s clearance leader was Cripps, with 188 in 25 games, and Daicos sits all the way down in 17th (130 clearances in 23 games).

He would be the lowest-ranked Brownlow medallist in that stat since Trent Cotchin (2012).

SO HOW MANY VOTES COULD DAICOS REALLY POLL?

While umpires now have the ability to look at stats before voting – likely helping Daicos, with his enormous disposal tallies – the stat most correlated with Brownlow votes remains the coaches’ votes.

Daicos’ potential sweep of the major awards began when he ran away with the AFLCA Champion Player of the Year gong, receiving 147 votes – a staggering average of almost seven per game (the maximum being 10 votes if both coaches give a player the full five). Marcus Bontempelli was second on 109.

Nick Daicos of the Magpies poses after being presented with the AFLCA Champion Player of the Year award during the 2026 AFL Awards at Centrepiece on August 25, 2026 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by James Wiltshire/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

We’re most interested in seeing where Daicos is the favourite to poll three votes – because if he’s going to reach his high-end Wheelo projection of 52 votes, he will need to be best on ground 17 times in 22 games.

Daicos polled 10 coaches votes in Opening Round plus Rounds 3, 6, 11, 16, 17, 20 and 22, while also leading the coaches’ votes (without polling 10) in Rounds 15 and 19. That would be 10 three-vote games.

He was inside the top three in the coaches’ votes in Rounds 5, 7, 10, 13, 21 and 23.

Those games are where his final tally will likely be decided; if he’s stuck picking up ones or twos here or there, Daicos will finish in the mid to late-30s. If he polls a few extra 3s, he’ll get well into the 40s.

Things will really get silly if Daicos polls in Rounds 1, 8, 9, 12, 18 or 24, games where he was not in the top three in the coaches’ votes – though it’s worth noting Daicos did still receive minor votes in four of those games.

He only polled zero coaches votes in Rounds 9 (loss to Geelong) and 24 (loss to Brisbane).

WHAT IS CHAMPION DATA’S BROWNLOW PREDICTION?

The AFL’s stats gurus are predicting a much closer count than most.

They agree with the Wheelo system, with Nick Daicos the clear favourite and Bailey Smith a solid second place, but the Cats speedster is tipped to be within seven votes of his Magpies rival.

Despite being second-favourite with bookmakers Marcus Bontempelli is predicted to finish seventh – and to be fair, he has polled surprisingly poorly in recent years given most experts have viewed him as the game’s best player; perhaps until midway through this year when Daicos went up another level.

Champion Data’s predicted Brownlow leaderboard

1. Nick Daicos (Collingwood) – 39.6 votes

2. Bailey Smith (Geelong Cats) – 32.8 votes

3. Patrick Cripps (Carlton) – 29.8 votes

4. Lachie Neale (Brisbane Lions) – 27.5 votes

5. Jai Newcombe (Hawthorn) – 26.6 votes

6. Jordan Dawson (Adelaide Crows) – 25.1 votes

7. Marcus Bontempelli (Western Bulldogs) – 24.4 votes

8. Max Gawn (Melbourne) – 23.2 votes

9. Harry Sheezel (North Melbourne) – 23.0 votes

10. Chad Warner (Sydney Swans) – 22.4 votes

See the full leaderboard and their club-by-club predictions here.