NFL Futures: Best Bet to Win NFC South (2020)

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The three-month mark to the start of the 2020 NFL regular season is fast approaching, and it’s starting to look like we’ll get a season more and more each week. While the exact protocols are still unknown, even to those closest and inside of the league, a form of the game will almost certainly be played on schedule come September.

No profession beside the players and coaches themselves is more thrilled of this news than sportsbooks and their operators. With the lost revenue of the NBA playoffs and start of the MLB season, bookmakers are itching to get the NFL action underway in any way they can get it.

Futures markets have become increasingly popular with the legalization of sports betting, and division winner futures offer bettors a chance to get down on teams early in the season, and potentially hedge come the final weeks.

With the addition of this guy named Tom Brady, the NFC South has become one of the most intriguing divisions in the league, with the New Orleans Saints (-110) and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+160) leading the pack, with the Atlanta Falcons (+700) and Carolina Panthers (+1400) trailing behind.

Let’s take a closer look at the division and see where the remaining value lies. And check out our consensus odds to win the NFC South here.

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When it comes to the NFC South, this is as much of a play on the rest of the division losing as it is on the Saints winning it. In what I see as the 2019 Cleveland Browns, I expect Brady will miss the regimen of New England more than he thinks, and the Buccaneers will hover around .500 for most of the season.

The Panthers are the future of the division under first-year head coach Matt Rhule, and Atlanta has been trending downward for years now under the aging Matt Ryan and are now in what I could see being Dan Quinn’s final season in Atlanta.

In the NFC, and maybe all of football, there has been no team whose been knocking on the doorstep of the Vince Lombardi for more consecutive years than the Saints. After what seems like three consecutive seasons of early exits (partially) at the hands of the referees, the Saints are in an extreme win-now mode in what could be quarterback Drew Brees’s final season.

While none of their statistics popped off the page in 2019, Brees was joined by emerging star running back Alvin Kamara in the backfield to lead their team to a 13-3 record.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Saints front seven took another step forward, ranking fourth in the league in allowing just 91.3 yards per game. With a pair of studs already in place on the edge in Cameron Jordan and Marcus Davenport, the Saints went out and signed middle linebacker Kiki Alonso this offseason.

The secondary, however, is what really excites me about this 2020 Saints team. With Janoris Jenkins and Marshon Lattimore on the corners, free safety Malcolm Jenkins should have another big season and bring down even more balls.

When it’s all said and done, I expect the 2020 New Orleans Saints to bring home their fourth straight NFC South title, as they make what could be one final push for the Super Bowl in the Drew Brees era.

Pick: New Orleans Saints -110