Picking upset winners is exciting – and it has become an important part of sports betting for the Super Bowl each year. The favorite has only won three of the last ten Super Bowls, and last year’s title game saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers not only beat the point spread but obliterate the Kansas City Chiefs by a shocking 22-point margin. The first two Super Bowls were snoozers, as the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs and the then-Oakland Raiders by a combined 44 points. In those days, the Super Bowl pitted the NFL champion against the AFL champion, and the talk about the AFL being an inferior league played a key role in the point spread for Super Bowl III, when the New York Jets came in as 18-point underdogs but rode “Broadway” Joe Namath’s guarantee to a 16-7 win over the Baltimore Colts.
The next year, the NFL representative was a heavy favorite, but the Kansas City Chiefs, 12-point underdogs, beat the Minnesota Vikings by 16 points, and the evening of the Super Bowl series between the AFL and the NFL made the leagues’ merger much more realistic than it had been two years before. This time around, the Cincinnati Bengals come in as underdogs in Super Bowl LVI, with an opening line of 3 to 3 ½ points that has grown as large as 4 ½ points, depending on the book. Does picking the Bengals for the upset make sense?
Let’s take a closer look at this NFL upset pick.
NFL News: Super Bowl Upset Pick
Why should you pick the Bengals?
Let’s rewind to Week 17, when the Cincinnati Bengals hosted the Kansas City Chiefs. Kansas City dominated play in the first half and went into the locker room up 14-0. Cincinnati needed a win to clinch the AFC North; with a loss, the Bengals might not have even ended up making the playoffs, especially after they lost to Cleveland the next week. However, they came back to deliver the 34-31 win. Against the Chiefs in the AFC Championship, things looked even worse, as the Bengals trailed 21-10 at the half and should have been trailing by even more, perhaps by 14 or even 18. But a combination of hubris by Patrick Mahomes (who insisted on going for the touchdown instead of kicking a field goal at the end of the half) and defensive might (a key tackle by Eli Apple to stop Tyreek Hill short of the end zone as the half ended) kept it at 11, and the Chiefs would only score three more points after that. This a team that is always in every game.
One thing that helps is that the Bengals can score in a hurry. Ja’Marr Chase had five catches of at least 50 yards to lead the NFL this season. Tailback Samaji Perine took a screen pass 41 yards to the house against Kansas City. Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd and Joe Mixon can all break big plays too, which is one reason why the Bengals have that ability to come back quickly.
We hear a lot about Joe Burrow, but Joe Mixon is a star in his own right. He had 88 yards against the Chiefs, mostly in the second half. On the season, he ran for 1,205 yards, third in the league. The Rams were sixth against the run, but the Bengals were also able to get big carries against the Titans, whose unit was tops in the league, as well as the Chiefs down the stretch.
How about the Rams’ running game? We heard that the return of Cam Akers would turn things around, but Akers and Michel have averaged 2.8 and 3.3 yards per carry in the postseason, respectively. Michel carried the ball 10 times against San Francisco in the NFC Championship but only had 16 yards to show for it. Cincinnati held Derrick Henry to 62 yards on 20 attempts. They shouldn’t be all that scared of the Akers-Michel duo.
So I like the Bengals to roll another upset. I picked them against Las Vegas, Tennessee and Kansas City too, and while I was ready to admit I was wrong when the Bengals went down 21-3 at Arrowhead last week, I also wasn’t surprised when they reversed the momentum. I didn’t expect Patrick Mahomes to fall off the table in the second half, so while the comeback win surprised me, the fact that the game went down to the last drive did not.
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