Since Patrick Mahomes took over as starting quarterback in 2018, the Kansas City Chiefs have been the NFL's undisputed paragon, appearing in five of the last six Super Bowls and winning three. The 2025 season wasn't expected to be any different: KC entered the campaign with the fourth-best Super Bowl odds (+800) and second-best AFC Championship odds (+350).
But things have not gone according to plan for Mahomes and company, and Sunday night's 20-10 upset home loss to the Houston Texans may have been the final blow to their campaign: After entering the season with -450 odds to make the playoffs, the Chiefs now find themselves with +390 odds to play in the postseason.
Kansas City's struggles are emblematic of an NFL season that has seen Super Bowl contenders falter time and again while teams with low preseason expectations flourish, particularly in the AFC. Week 14 featured several matchups with immense playoff consequences, becoming a turning point for betting futures attached to both the overachievers and underachievers.
"This week may set the tone for where we may end up landing," DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN before the weekend. "There's a lot of implications that go into winning the division and how many wins you can get for the whole year."
Avello said that given the Chiefs' track record and their power rating that is "still very high," the sportsbook had not been handicapping the team differently than in season's past. Additionally, bettors supported the Chiefs in futures early on, making them a liability for DraftKings in the AFC West winner market, while attracting considerable handle in the Super Bowl and conference winner markets across multiple sportsbooks.
"Our job, what we're trying to do is make every game a coin flip and make our Super Bowl odds reflective of what the probability is to make the Super Bowl," Caesars Sportsbook head of football Joey Feazel told ESPN. "So when there's parity, we are consistently adjusting, especially on [the] Super Bowl."
Sunday night's loss eliminated KC from AFC West winner contention, ending their run of consecutive division titles dating back to 2016. The Chiefs entered the season as -120 favorites for the division, and now the winner will be either the Denver Broncos (+275 preseason) or the Los Angeles Chargers (+350 preseason).
The Baltimore Ravens' season has also been a massive disappointment by the odds. Lamar Jackson's squad came into the campaign tied with the Buffalo Bills as Super Bowl (+650) and AFC (+325) favorites, but lost five of their first six games before a string of wins put them back into playoff contention. That is, until Sunday's 27-22 home upset loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday stopped them dead in their tracks once again.
The defeat dropped the Ravens from -230 favorites to win the AFC North down to +170, while the Steelers improved from +285 to -170, per DraftKings odds. Baltimore had come into the season with second-shortest odds (-500) to make the playoffs, and now sport +185 underdog odds. Before the game, Avello said this result would "set the tone" for the Ravens for the rest of the season.
Yet somehow, Kansas City's and Baltimore's losses were not even the most fateful for any of the perceived championship contenders. Though they came into the season with low expectations -- 100-1 to win the Super Bowl and +400 to win the AFC South -- the Indianapolis Colts were one of the major surprises of the first half, going 7-1 to start the campaign.
But since then, they've lost four of their last five and Sunday's divisional loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars was inarguably the most impactful yet: Not only did the contest put Jacksonville in the driver's seat to win the AFC South -- with -165 odds at DraftKings -- it also saw the loss of Daniel Jones to a season-ending Achilles injury amid a true breakout campaign for the quarterback.
Before Sunday's game, the Colts were +140 to win the AFC South; after the loss and the injury news, they plummeted to +2200; in the Super Bowl market, they moved from +1400 to 130-1. Indy has been the betting favorite for the division since starting 2-0.
And remember the Texans from earlier? They now have +150 odds to win the AFC South after beating the Chiefs and will attempt to pull ahead of the Jags despite no more head-to-head matchups. Houston had entered the season as the favorites to win the AFC South (-110).
The only team that has lived up to high AFC expectations to some extent is the Bills, and even they have had to contend with the sudden revival of their division rival, the New England Patriots, who currently hold the conference's No. 2 seed.
Buffalo got a much needed win over the Cincinnati Bengals and are the AFC's top Super Bowl contender by the odds (+850), despite New England and Denver both having better odds to win the conference (+350 to Buffalo's +390). It sets up a massive matchup between the Bills and Pats in Week 15, with Buffalo currently a 1.5-point road favorite at DraftKings.
The NFC has also seen its fair share of turmoil this season, most notably with the Chicago Bears briefly grabbing the conference's top seed, before a Week 14 divisional loss to the Green Bay Packers sent them crashing back to earth. Feazel said before the weekend that the Bears were a solid futures liability for the book, but that the matchup with Green Bay would be a reality check for all involved: "This week will tell us if the Bears are the real deal or not," he said.
In general, the chaos surrounding NFL betting this season has been welcome to bookmakers. Though some futures liabilities exist on the Bears, Patriots, San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, the preseason and early season AFC favorites faltering has put the sportsbooks in a solid position entering the final phase of the regular season.
It's also welcome on a game-to-game basis: After favorites won over 71% of their games last season, one of the best marks in NFL history, they've won just 66% of games straight up this season, much more in-line with what bookmakers are comfortable with.
"The parity is what a bookmaker's dream would be for football," said Feazel. "Any given Sunday, any team can win and it's not something we really saw last year. We saw a lot of favorites come in, week in and week out. The bad teams were really bad and the good teams were really good. And that's not necessarily the case this year."