The Ravens, Bills and Eagles are all neck and neck at the top of the betting and with good reason. The Eagles are the reigning Super Bowl champions and the Bills are fresh from having Josh Allen win NFL MVP. However, of these three it’s the Ravens that I can’t stop backing to win the Super Bowl next February.

Lamar Jackson is one of the best players in the league. The quarterback has already won two MVP awards and was unfortunate not to win a third last year. They’ve reached the playoffs in six of the seven years and lost in the AFC Championship game in 2023 and Divisional playoffs last year, in a narrow loss to the Bills.

They’ve been so close and it’s time to finally get over the line and reach the Super Bowl and win it. As well as an elite quarterback they have a wrecking ball at running back in Derrick Henry, incredible coaching, a strong receiving corps and a defense that ranks amongst the best in the league. This is their time.

On Thursday, we saw the Dallas Cowboys trade their star defensive talent Micah Parsons to the Packers, in a move which saw Green Bay’s Super Bowl odds crumble but there are still a couple of big prices available.

The Packers looked like a value bet heading into the season but the arrival of Parsons instantly turns them into one of the favourites. Parsons almost singlehandedly turned the Cowboys into one of the league’s better defenses and will now do that with what was already a strong, but not elite, Packers D.

They have an excellent head coach in Matt LaFleur and in Jordan Love they have a QB ready to take the next step and become one of the very best in the NFL. The only thing stopping them has been the lack of a defensive stud and an alpha-wide receiver. Parsons fixed the defense and the draft selection of Matthew Golden from Texas finally gives the Packers a true WR1 to add to what was already a strong set of pass catchers.

This team is ready to explode, so make sure you’re on them early.

It would be easy to put the Bills in as my third pick, and while they have a great chance, I wanted to offer you a team that are perhaps underappreciated by the people compiling the odds, which is why I’m suggesting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the best long shot available.

This is a team that is just solid across the board. Baker Mayfield has grown in the past couple of years and showed that he isn’t just an NFL-level quarterback, he’s actually an above-average one. They have great pass catchers in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, and have just added rookie Emeka Egbuka in the draft, giving them one of the strongest receiver rooms in the entire league. They have one of the best head coaches in Todd Bowles, and he’s helped this team improve every single year, and they have a strong defense.

What’s the one thing that could help a good, not exceptional team, win the Super Bowl? Their schedule. The NFC South has one other half-decent team in the Falcons, but two terrible teams in the Panthers and Saints, teams that are very much in the process of rebuilding. That should give them a strong chance of picking up plenty of wins, as should the fact that they’ll only play five teams to reach the playoffs last season.