Preseason certainty is a currency that NFL franchises spend freely every spring — and one that the 2025 season gleefully devalued. The Kansas City Chiefs missed the playoffs entirely despite reaching each of the three preceding Super Bowls, winning two of them. So did the Baltimore Ravens and the Detroit Lions, despite both being considered genuine Lombardi contenders in the preseason. Even the perennial AFC contending Buffalo Bills failed to win their division, finishing as runners-up to the New England Patriots before slumping to yet another heartbreaking playoff exit, this time at the hands of the Broncos.
2025 was indeed the year of the underdog. Those aforementioned Pats went on to reach the Super Bowl, while the Seattle Seahawks would win it all. Those two were considered +8000 and +6600 underdogs in preseason. So, who are the biggest favorites to win their divisions in 2026? And crucially, will they live up to the billing this time around?
Buffalo Bills — AFC East Favorites (-130)
Twelve wins and a playoff run that ended in overtime in Denver doesn’t sound like a crisis — and it wasn’t. But finishing second in your own division, behind a 14-3 Patriots team that announced Drake Maye as a legitimate franchise quarterback, reframes everything. Josh Allen was spectacular in 2025: 3,668 passing yards, 25 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, 579 rushing yards, and 14 rushing touchdowns. Against Jacksonville in the wild card, he was genuinely elite, but then he was responsible for no fewer than four turnovers in the Divisional Round disaster in Denver, consigning his side to yet another missed opportunity.
The offseason brought a full reset at the top. Joe Brady arrives as head coach, while wideout DJ Moore, acquired from the Bears for a 2026 second-round pick, gives Allen the genuine No. 1 receiver this offense has been desperate for years. As such, online betting sites now make the Bills the clear favorite to return to the AFC East’s summit, making them the shortest-priced division winner favorite in the entire NFL.
The latest NFL betting at Bovada odds currently position Josh Allen and Co. as a -130 frontrunner to win out East next season, but make no mistake about it, this battle is a two-horse race. Miami and the Jets are both deep in rebuilds, unlikely to threaten for divisional honors for years to come. But the defending champion New England Patriots — despite facing a tougher 2026 schedule — is not stepping aside, and Drake Maye is ascending to superstardom faster than anyone ever expected.
Baltimore Ravens — AFC North Favorites (-120)
That missed 44-yard game-winning walk off field goal attempt is a hard image to shake. Rookie kicker Tyler Loop, 26-24, time expired, wide right, and Pittsburgh winning the AFC North title — the cruelest possible punctuation on a season that had already unraveled badly. The Ravens finished 8-9, their first playoff miss since 2021, with a 1-5 start — the franchise’s worst opening since 2015 — following Lamar Jackson’s Week 4 hamstring injury against Kansas City. Completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns, and QBR all fell to three-year lows for the two-time MVP-winning QB, and it cost long-time head coach John Harbaugh his job.
Jesse Minter — the former Chargers defensive coordinator who had Los Angeles finishing top ten in both scoring defense and yards allowed in 2025 — emerged from a 16-candidate search as the right voice to reshape the franchise. Jackson himself called the change “a breath of fresh air,” and the addition of two-time sack leader Trey Hendrickson from rivals Cincinnati only strengthens their status as Kings of the North in waiting.
Throughout the rest of the division, Pittsburgh enters the post-Tomlin era under Mike McCarthy with market projections in the 8-9 win range. The Bengals finished 6-11 in 2025 — Joe Burrow’s health, as ever, the defining variable. Cleveland, stripped of Myles Garrett, is a team in transition. The AFC North is Baltimore’s to lose, and -120 odds are entirely justified.
Los Angeles Rams — NFC West Favorites (+105)
Is there a more dangerous combination in the NFC than the reigning MVP quarterback, the sport’s most disruptive pass rusher freshly signed, and a franchise that knows exactly what it is trying to do? Matthew Stafford was magnificent in 2025 — 4,707 passing yards (he led the NFL), 46 touchdowns, a 109.2 passer rating that ties Kurt Warner’s 1999 franchise record. The Rams went 12-5, reached the NFC Championship in Seattle, and lost 31-27 on a muffed punt and a handful of defensive lapses.
For the second consecutive season, they were eliminated by the team that went on to win the championship. But the window is unmistakably open. The Rams were already considered the favorites to emerge with the Lombardi at Super Bowl LXI next February, and then they acquired Myles Garrett from Cleveland — the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year who just set an NFL single-season sack record in 2025. Jared Verse, a 2027 first, a 2028 second, and a 2029 third have all been sacrificed to make way for the defensive behemoth, but none of that matters. The Rams have one singular mandate: Go and win it all.
Myles Garrett stands alone as the single season sacks King 👑🐐
— Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) January 4, 2026
When you’re overwhelming +550 favorites to do exactly that, one would think that you’d be an almighty favorite to win the division as well. Not quite. The Rams are indeed +105 favorites, but that’s not the shortest in the league, as the aforementioned Bills and Ravens attest to. And the reason for that is the fact that they share the AFC West with the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.
They finished two games ahead of Los Angeles in 2025 and hold the second-best divisional odds at +196. The two sides meet on Christmas Day in Seattle and in the regular-season finale at Los Angeles. Make no mistake: the +105 line is genuine value for a roster that looks, on paper, like the most complete in the entire NFL — and with their SoFi Stadium home hosting Super Bowl LXI in February, they will be more motivated than ever before to convert their superstar roster into actual hardware.
