Handicapping Super Bowl 50, Part 2: Game Overview

Following NFL football?  If so, you are one of millions of UK sports fans who have become caught up in the action of a sport which used to enjoy only a relatively narrow geographical reach.  This year, Super Bowl 50, the culminating game in the NFL season, will be broadcast in 230 countries. 

In Handicapping Super Bowl 50, Part 1 of this series, I talked a bit about the growing popularity of NFL in the UK.  Now I want to talk more about this year’s Super Bowl and what you need to know to handicap it.

In Super Bowl 50, the Denver Broncos will be squaring off against the Carolina Panthers.  This is a huge game, especially for the Broncos, for multiple reasons.  First off, no one thought they would ever get this far this year.  Secondly, this is the eighth time they have reached the Super Bowl.  That is a record for most appearances in a Super Bowl ever, shared with several other teams—the Cowboys, the Steelers, and the Patriots—the last of whom the Broncos bested in the playoffs last week.

Who is the favourite to win?  Bets are heavily on the Panthers, who are favoured by 4 points.  This is interesting because even though the majority of the betting public is putting their money on the Panthers, that is not a huge point differential.  This is expected to be a close game.  A fluke could easily throw off the prediction—for that matter, so could any one predictable factor that others have failed to account for in their predictions.

It is also noteworthy that there are a lot of people who will put their money down on the Broncos anyway, or more specifically, on Peyton Manning.  Peyton Manning is a juggernaut among quarterbacks, and his long career is one which many NFL fans have followed closely.  As this will likely be his final game, it will be an emotional one many fans are very hopeful he will win.  That way he will have a chance to end his career in the NFL on a triumphant note.

Of course, if you are going to be betting on the Super Bowl, my recommendation is that you resist the urge to wager emotionally (unless of course you are betting for fun, and emotion is your main reason for doing it!).  You should conduct a careful analysis of Super Bowl 50 and decide based on that who is likely to win. 

You may think based on the fact that the majority of punters are backing the Panthers that the Broncos do not have much of a chance, but there are a couple of important things to remember here.  One is that the public is quite often completely wrong about the outcome of a game.  The other is that there are a number of factors in the Broncos’ favour.  I will discuss these in more depth in Handicapping Super Bowl 50 Part 3 and Part 4.