The conference championships will be played on Sunday as the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers visit the Atlanta Falcons. At this point in the season, bettors are often getting their picks in not just on who will win the conference championships but who will go on to win the Super Bowl as well. A related ante-post bet has to do with individual success: which player will be crowned the Super Bowl MVP?
Quarterbacks are favored for MVP
Of course, to win the Super Bowl MVP, first you need to play for a team who can actually make it to the Super Bowl.
In that way the key players on the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons have an edge. Those two teams host the games this Sunday and that gives them a better chance to advance to the final game of the season than their counterparts. The Super Bowl itself will be neutral sited in Houston, however at this point the Pats are the favorites to win the big game. They are priced at 13/10 (+130) with bet365, odds that may actually over-rate them a little.
Tom Brady favored to win MVP
However, being the quarterback on the Super Bowl favorites certainly gives you a good chance to win the Super Bowl MVP in the minds of many. Not surprisingly, Tom Brady is the favorite in this market, priced at 8/5 (+162) with BetVictor sportsbook.
It's an award that Brady has won on three occasions before, most recently in 2015. In five of the last seven years, the award has gone to the quarterback of the winning team and so many might like Brady's outlook.
The Patriots themselves won't be looking passed the Pittsburgh Steelers at this point. Ben Roethlisberger and company won on the road last week in Kansas City and it's quite possible that they might win another road game on Sunday.
The Pittsburgh QB is out of at 10/1 (+1000) with Ladbrokes to win the Super Bowl MVP, making him the fourth favorite behind the other quarterbacks.
When it comes to other positions, Le'Veon Bell is the top-rated non-quarterback in this market. The star runningback has rushed for well over 300 yards in his first two playoff appearances this season.
The Super Bowl MVP does not always go to a quarterback, however you do have to go back a very long way to find a runningback that won the award. Terrell Davis is the last one to win the Super Bowl MVP, doing so in 1998 as part of the Denver Broncos.
Bell is priced at 12/1 (+1200) odds that probably have to be considered short just based on the three-event outcome that bettors would need. In order for Bell to win the MVP, first, Pitt need to win the AFC, then they need to win the final game of the season (only one player on a losing team has won the MVP), and then Bell has to be the stand-out player of the game. However, the odds on Bell are long, and they are on Roethlisberger as well. A good angle might be to back both players, hope for an upset in the AFC, and then have Pittsburgh's two stars heading into the final game of the season.
