The wild card round of the NFL playoff season is done. On the NFC side of the bracket, all of the favorites held except Dallas, which means that San Francisco’s path to the Super Bowl just got a lot easier, at least on paper, with a date with 7-seed Green Bay coming up next. In the other NFC divisional game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ride the momentum of their win over Philadelphia to a date in Detroit with the Lions. On the AFC side, all of the home teams won, which included Houston upsetting Cleveland as a home underdog. Baltimore gets to welcome Houston after their bye week, and Kansas City heads to Buffalo in what will be another cold playoff game. Check out the NFL betting odds for each team to get to the Super Bowl as well as our thoughts on which dark horses can still make a deeper run in the NFL Divisional Round.
2024 NFL Divisional Round Dark Horses Betting Odds
Detroit Lions
Detroit is a dark horse just because of its history. The Lions are one of the oldest teams in the NFL but have never appeared in a Super Bowl. They have just two playoff victories in the last three decades, and the last time they won more than one postseason game in the same year, they won it all – but that was in 1957, before the Super Bowl era. With Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta catching passes, Jared Goff has two elite talents on the field. Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery might be the best tailback tandem left in the postseason field. This team opened 2023 by beating the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead in prime time, ruining their championship celebration. There was a time in the middle third of the season when the Lions seemed to doubt themselves, but that loss to Dallas, in which the officials basically handed the game to the Cowboys with a bungled illegal touching call on what would have been the game-winning two-point conversion, seems to have restored the Lions’ purpose.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tampa Bay has Baker Mayfield playing at his best right now, and that’s dangerous. When Mayfield is questioning himself, he makes mistake after mistake, and he hesitates – and that’s when his team loses. He has all the confidence in the world right now, and he became just the fourth quarterback to throw three touchdown passes without an interception in playoff games for two different teams in league history. The defense used its typical blitz-heavy approach to overwhelm the Eagles; for the season, they blitzed on 40% of opposing quarterback dropbacks, and Jared Goff’s QBR is just 15th when he’s facing a blitz. This is a hot streak that could roll through Detroit – to me, the Lions-Bucs game is a toss-up, but the winner will have all kinds of confidence and momentum heading to San Francisco.
The only real dark horse left on the AFC side is Houston. That relationship that has built between quarterback C.J. Stroud and Nico Collins is scary-good, as we have seen since Week 16. Over that time period, Stroud has the third-best QBR in the league, with only Lamar Jackson and Jordan Love ahead of him. They just shredded the top defense in the NFL in the wild-card round, and the Ravens have shown the tendency to fall apart in the postseason. If the Texans can get by the Ravens on a cold day, then their AFC Championship date with the Chiefs or the Bills becomes extremely interesting.
Odds to Win the Super Bowl 58 Before the NFL Divisional Round Games
| Team Odds | |
|---|---|
| San Francisco 49ers +175 | Baltimore Ravens +280 |
| Buffalo Bills +450 | Kansas City Chiefs +750 |
| Detroit Lions +800 | Green Bay Packers +2800 |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers +3300 | Houston Texans +3500 |
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NFL Divisional Round
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