Early Super Bowl LXI odds: Favorites, contenders and 2026 NFL outlook

The 2025 NFL season is officially in the books with the Seattle Seahawks raising the Vince Lombardi trophy as Super Bowl LX champions with a 29-13 win over the AFC champion New England Patriots. 

While Seattle will relish in the sweet, sweet victory of winning the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium, the rest of the league has turned the page toward their preparations toward 2026 with an eye toward trading places with the Seahawks in a year’s time. 

In our first real preview of the offseason, let’s see which teams enter the year as Super Bowl LXI favorites while also spotlighting some key franchises and storylines to keep an eye on across the next few months. 

Super Bowl LXI odds

Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook.

Five teams to watch this offseason

Minnesota Vikings 

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah bet big on 2024 NFL Draft 10th overall pick quarterback J.J. McCarthy in 2025, and it cost him his job as the Minnesota Vikings general manager. Minnesota went 14-3 in 2024 with Sam Darnold as the team’s starting quarterback. After he melted down in their last two games of the season, a 31-9 loss at the Detroit Lions with the NFC North title and the NFC’s No. 1 seed on the line and a 27-9 opening round playoff loss at the Los Angeles Rams, Minnesota let Darnold walk in free agency. 

A year later, Darnold is hoisting the Vince Lombardi trophy. McCarthy was literally the league’s worst quarterback in 2025: he ranked last in the NFL in completion percentage (58%), touchdown-interception (11-12) and passer rating (72.6). As a result, 2022 NFL Offensive Player of the Year wide receiver Justin Jefferson had career-lows in receiving yards (1,048) and receiving touchdowns (2). That’s why Jefferson made sure anyone who was willing to listen during Super Bowl week that life would have been better in 2025 if they had just re-signed Darnold instead of letting him walk. 

J.J. McCarthy’s future as Vikings QB is far from guaranteed after Minnesota fires GM who picked him

Tyler Sullivan

So how will the Vikings address the quarterback position this offseason? One would imagine, even if it’s just for the morale of their offensive players like Jefferson, that Minnesota would like to bring in a veteran quarterback in this offseason to compete with and/or mentor McCarthy. Aaron Rodgers is set to be a free agent, and former Viking Kirk Cousins could hit the open market with the Atlanta Falcons reportedly set to cut him to get out of his contract. 

Following Minnesota’s offseason will be fascinating especially since they won’t hire a new GM until after the draft. Head coach Kevin O’Connell is in firm control of the Vikings’ offseason. 

Cincinnati Bengals 

After winning the AFC in the 2021 season and being the AFC runner-ups in the 2022 season, the Bengals have missed the playoffs for three consecutive seasons — a long drought for the likes of quarterback Joe Burrow and wide receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. 

In 2025, Burrow missed nine games after having surgery for turf toe, but the defense still remained the problem. Cincy also became the first team since the 1966 New York Giants to lose consecutive games while scoring at least 38 points in defeats against the New York Jets (39-38 in Week 8) and the Chicago Bears (47-42 in Week 9). 

The Bengals have allowed 23.2 points per game in Burrow’s starts, the fifth-most for any quarterback with a winning record in his career since at least 1950, per CBS Sports Research. Cincinnati projects to have $47.4 million in effective cap space this offseason, the seventh-most in the league according to OverTheCap.com. Perhaps the Bengals can overhaul their defense in free agency in order to finally return to the playoffs in 2026.

Tennessee Titans

The Tennessee Titans are an NFL-worst 6-28 across the last two seasons, but things appear to be turning around in Nashville. The team hired former New York Jets head coach and San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh to be their next head coach, and he was able to hire former New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll to be his offensive coordinator.

Daboll was Josh Allen’s OC from 2018 to 2021 in Buffalo when Allen made the leap to becoming one of the league’s best passers. That’s great news for 2025’s first overall pick Cam Ward, who closed his rookie year well with 11 total touchdowns to just two turnovers across his final nine starts. Tennessee is also set to have $93.3 million in effective cap space, the most in the NFL this offseason according to OverThe Cap.com. 

The 2025 AFC champion Patriots spent an NFL-record $364 million in free agency last offseason and ended up in the Super Bowl in 2024 third overall pick quarterback Drake Maye’s second season and Mike Vrabel’s first as New England’s head coach. Perhaps Tennessee could follow the Patriots’ blueprint to return to relevance as soon as next season. 

Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders are the owners of the 2026 NFL Draft’s first overall pick after producing a 3-14 record in 2025, which led to Pete Carroll being fired as head coach after just one season in charge. 

The Raiders are reportedly set to hire Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, the best young offensive mind available in the coaching carousel this offseason, and they have the the third most effective space in the NFL at $76.991 million, according to OverTheCap.com. 

With Geno Smith leading the NFL in both sacks taken (55) and interceptions thrown (17) in 2025 at the age of 35, Indiana Hoosier Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza will certainly be the pick for Las Vegas. It will be intriguing to see if the Raiders can fill out a quality offensive line as well as the rest of the roster for Mendoza. There are a few pieces — Ashton Jeanty, a first-round pick from a year ago, and 2024 first team All-Pro tight end Brock Bowers on offense, and five-time Pro Bowl edge rusher Maxx Crosby on defense — but there’s still a ways to go. 

If the Raiders add spend their free agency money wisley and if Mendoza is capabale in Year 1, Kubiak have the Raiders in the mix for a playoff spot from the jump. 

Los Angeles Chargers

Things are definitely trending in the right direction for the Chargers. They just made the playoffs for consecutive seasons for the first time since the late 2000s and Justin Herbert’s 24,820 passing yards rank as the second-most in a player’s first six seasons all-time behind only Peyton Manning, and that’s despite being the most-sacked QB in the league since Herbert began in 2020. 

There were signs of a stallout, though, and that’s why Herbert now has a high-end play caller with the Chargers hiring Mike McDaniel, the former Miami Dolphins head coach, to be his offensive coordinator. The 5.78 yards per play average the Dolphins had with him as their play-calling head coach rank as the seventh-most yards per play among head coaches in the Super Bowl era. If offensive tackles Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt can remain upright, Los Angeles’ offense could be special — especially since the Chargers are projected to have the second most effective space in the NFL, $79.23 million according to OverTheCap.com. 

Los Angeles could spend significant cash on upgrading Herbert’s offensive line while still having plenty of money left over to address other roster needs. The Chargers could make a leap in 2026 via a free agency spending spree like the Patriots did in 2025. 

Five offseason storylinesWill the Cardinals trade Kyler Murray? 

Murray, the first overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, played just five games in the 2025 season because of a foot injury. His placement on injured reserve served as a soft benching of sorts because it came right Murray had begun preparing to return. 

Murray is a uniqute talent and a two-time Pro Bowl quarterback who led Arizona to their last playoff appearance in the 2021 season, but the Cardinals can also save $37 million in cap space by trading him as he enters his third year of a five-year, $230.5 million contract extension.

We’ll learm in the next month or so what new coach Mike LaFleur, who comes over to the Cardinals after spending the last three years as Sean McVay’s offensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams, wants to do at the team’s quarterback position. 

How smooth will Cowboys’ talks with Pickens be?

Wide receiver George Pickens had a big breakout in his first season with the Dallas Cowboys in 2025. He earned both his first Pro Bowl selection and his first All-Pro team selection, a second team nod, in his first year catching passes from Dak Prescott. 

Pickens ranked inside the top 10 in essentially every key receiving metric, and now his rookie deal is complete. Dallas owner and general manager Jerry Jones will reportedly slap the franchise tag on the 24-year-old this offseason with the goal of re-signing Pickens to a long-term extension. 

However … Jones also intended to re-sign All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons last offseason, and that saga concluded with Parsons being traded to the Green Bay Packers a week before the 2025 season kicked off. A hilarious irony is that Pickens is represented by the same power agent, David Mulugheta, who also reps Parsons. Jones’ approach struggled to break through with Mulugheta and Parsons. Let’s see if he tries a different tactic with Pickens. 

Catches

93

8th

Receiving yards

1,429

3rd

Yards per catch

15.4

5th

Receiving TD

9

T-8th

Receiving first downs

73

T-3rd

Catches of 25-plus yards

13

T-4th

Could the team that signs Malik Willis make a big leap?

Willis, a 2022 third-round pick of the Tennessee Titans, spent the last two seasons revamping his game under the tutelage of Matt LaFleur while backing up Jordan Love on the Green Bay Packers. When thrust into action because of injuries to Love the last two years, Willis completed 79% of his passes for 10.9 yards per pass attempt, six passing touchdowns, no interceptions and a 134.6 passer rating. 

If one extrapolated his three Packers’ starts into what it would look like over a 17-game season, that would result in a pace of 3,473 passing yards, 986 rushing yards, 34 total touchdowns and just five turnovers. It is a tantalizing skillset and in a weak class of free agent QBs, the 26-year-old Willis is the prize. 

This may feel like a surreal turn of events for a QB who struggled with the Titans and was cast aside in favor of Will Levis, but as evidenced by Darnold winning a Super Bowl, a QB’s success has as much to do with his situation as it does his talent. 

Where will EDGE Trey Hendrickson go? 

Prior to being limited to seven games in 2025 because of a hip injury, Hendrickson led the NFL with a combined 35 sacks from 2023 to 2024, producing exactly 17.5 in each campaign. He’s the fifth player in NFL history with at least that number of sacks in consecutive seasons. 

Additionally, casual fans may be surprised to learn Hendrickson’s 74.5 sacks this decade are the third-most in the league behind only Myles Garrett (95.0) and T.J. Watt (80.5). He is 31-years-old, but he’ll still have plenty of interest as the best edge rusher on the free agency market and one of the best pass rushers of the 2020s. 

How much he’ll make on a new deal is intriguing after the Bengals chose to play hardball with him the last two offseasons despite Hendrickson’s historic production. 

And finally: Will Travis Kelce retire? 

Kelce, who completed his 13th NFL season at the age of 36 in 2025, has a retirement decision to make. 

His two-year contract extension is finished, so he enters 2026 without a contract. Kansas City will certainly re-sign their all-time leader in catches (1,080), receiving yards (13,002) and receiving touchdowns (82) if he indicates he wants to continue playing football in 2026. If records mean anything to the three-time Super Bowl champion, he ranks third in all-time catches by a tight end, third in receiving yards all-time by a tight end and fifth in receiving touchdowns all time by a tight end. 

He’ll certainly have to weigh really having nothing much left to prove other than stuffing the stat sheet ahead to cap what’s already a Hall of Fame career with the chance of suffering a major injury. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes also may or may not be ready to begin the 2026 season in Week 1 after tearing his ACL and LCL in Week 15 against the Los Angeles Chargers. 

If Kelce does hang it up to pursue whateve lucrative options await him in his second career, the Chiefs will sorely miss him, even if Father Time has clearly caught up to him.