Everything that happens in sports has additional context when viewed from a betting perspective. From season-changing injuries to record-setting moments and so much more, the news cycle will constantly and significantly affect the sports betting industry.
Our betting buzz file, with contributions from David Purdum, Doug Greenberg and others, aims to provide fans a look at the sports betting stories that are driving the conversation.
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Sept. 24: Colts flying up odds boards, garnering awards attention amid hot start
Doug Greenberg: The first three weeks of any NFL season always deliver a surprise or two, and this year’s biggest has to be the early domination of the Indianapolis Colts.
Indianapolis finds itself among the ranks of the undefeated, and while critics could point to a somewhat weak schedule (their opponents have combined for just one win thus far), the Colts have covered the spread in every game, making them one of only two 3-0 ATS teams in the league along with the Los Angeles Chargers.
The expectations for Indy were low entering the season as ESPN BET listed them with +200 odds to make the playoffs, +400 to win the AFC South (behind the Houston Texans at -110 and Jacksonville Jaguars at +300) and 100-1 to win the Super Bowl. Fast forward three weeks and the Colts are now -280 for the postseason, -140 favorites in the division and 35-1 to win the Super Bowl.
If sportsbooks didn’t see this coming, bettors certainly didn’t either, and they haven’t bought into Indianapolis following the major price adjustments. At BetMGM, the Colts are still only the 23rd-most-bet team by ticket share (0.9%) and the 27th-most-bet team by handle share (0.4%) to win the Super Bowl. BetMGM senior trading manager Christian Cipollini said that Indy or several other under-bet undefeated teams winning the Super Bowl “would be a good outcome for the sportsbook.”
The Colts’ hot start has tracked with some surprisingly excellent performances from their players and coaching staff, who have seen their odds for major awards shift as a result.
After rushing for a league-high 338 yards through three weeks, running back Jonathan Taylor is the favorite for Offensive Player of the Year, showing +500 odds at ESPN BET; he was +3500 before the season. Shane Steichen is now the favorite for Coach of the Year at +360 after opening the season at +2000.
Tight end Tyler Warren has flown up the Offensive Rookie of the Year odds board, sitting at +500, behind only Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Emeka Egbuka (+350). That Warren is even in consideration for the award is significant given the extreme rarity of tight ends winning it.
Then there’s quarterback Daniel Jones, who has gotten off to a monster start in a redemption season with Indianapolis that has seen his MVP odds move from 200-1 to 50-1, 11th on ESPN BET’s board. He is also second favorite for Comeback Player of the Year at +300, but as fans found out with Sam Darnold last season, Jones likely wouldn’t qualify under The Associated Press’ current criteria for the award.
The Colts will face their first big test Sunday when they head to Los Angeles to play the Rams as 3.5-point underdogs. As of Tuesday, the Rams had attracted 45.7% of the spread wagers but 74.4% of the spread handle at ESPN BET.
Sept. 23: Mendoza the new Heisman favorite after Mateer injury
Doug Greenberg: A Heisman race that was already wide open just experienced a big twist.
On Tuesday afternoon, Oklahoma coach Brent Venables announced that quarterback John Mateer would undergo surgery on his right hand and “will miss some game action,” per a news release. The release also noted that “the expectation is that Mateer will return to action sometime this season.”
In the meantime, though, Mateer lost his status as the Heisman favorite at +750 at ESPN BET as of Tuesday morning. Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza subsequently grabbed the top spot on the sportsbook’s board, showing +650 odds, with Miami QB Carson Beck (+1000) and Oregon QB Dante Moore (+1100) rounding out the top three. Mateer had not returned to the odds board as of publication time.
Mateer and Beck were the favorites across the sportsbook marketplace before the former took control of the race by throwing for 271 yards and a touchdown and adding a rushing TD during the Sooners’ 24-17 conference win over Auburn in Week 4. Mendoza, meanwhile, threw for five touchdowns in Indiana’s 63-10 blowout of Illinois.
Mendoza’s new odds are still the longest for any favorite at this point in the season since at least 2012, according to data from SportsOddsHistory.com.
Sept. 22: Penn State, Georgia favored in marquee matchups
David Purdum: No. 3 Penn State and No. 5 Georgia begin the week as small home favorites in two of the marquee games on a big college football Saturday.
The Nittany Lions opened as 3.5-point favorites over the visiting Oregon Ducks, while Georgia was installed as a 3-point favorite over the Alabama Crimson Tide at sportsbooks.
The sixth-ranked Ducks are underdogs for only the second time during the regular season since joining the Big Ten in 2024. Penn State is 4-20 against top-10 teams under coach James Franklin, including 1-17 in Big Ten play.
Georgia has won 33 straight home games, but Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart has lost six of seven meetings against the Crimson Tide, who bounced back from an opening upset loss to Florida State with back-to-back wins.
“They’ve been big favorites and put up a lot of points over the last two weeks, so there hasn’t been much to learn,” Adrian Horton, senior director of trading for ESPN BET, said of Alabama. “The last two weeks they’ve looked like a good team taking care of business, but we’ll learn more over the next few weeks as they enter SEC play.”
The opening line on the Alabama-Georgia game varied at sportsbooks before settling at Bulldogs -3 on Monday.
“Our power ratings initially projected Alabama as slight underdogs, just under a field goal, against Georgia this weekend,” Joey Feazel, head football oddsmaker for Caesars Sports, told ESPN. “We opened at Georgia -2.5, though some operators went live with Georgia -3.5. As is typical with Sunday college football openers, the lines were volatile early on, and we’ve since settled at Georgia -3.”
No. 13 Ole Miss begins the week as a 1.5-point home favorite over No. 4 LSU in another Top 25 matchup on Saturday.
Sept. 21: Browns, Panthers end big underdog losing streak
Doug Greenberg and David Purdum: Through two weeks of the 2025 NFL season, underdogs of four points or greater were 0-12 straight-up, the first time no underdog that large had won a game outright through Week 2 of any season in the Super Bowl era (since 1966), according to ESPN Research.
That streak ended emphatically on Sunday. First, the Carolina Panthers (+4.5) easily took down the Atlanta Falcons with a final score of 30-0. Then, a short time later, the Cleveland Browns (+7.5) stunned the Green Bay Packers with a 13-10 comeback win, capped off by a game-winning field goal as time expired. Cleveland was as long as +3000 on the live moneyline during the contest, according to ESPN BET odds.
Through Sunday afternoon’s games, underdogs of four or more points are now 2-16 straight-up, but are interestingly a perfectly balanced 9-9 against the spread.
As a result of their large favorite status, the Packers were a popular pick for survivor pools in Week 3. In ESPN’s Eliminator Challenge, 15.65% of players (third-most) picked Green Bay, while 1,817 players — accounting for 10.7% of the remaining player population (fourth-most) — picked the Pack in the $1,000-entry Circa Survivor contest.
Big favorites tend to be popular plays with the betting public every week, especially in moneyline parlays. The Packers very much lived up to that reputation in Week 3, being the most-bet spread side by tickets on Sunday at BetMGM and Hard Rock Bet. Green Bay was also Hard Rock Bet’s most popular moneyline play by bets and handle, as well as the most lopsided moneyline and spread play, attracting 95.44% of combined handle in those markets.
ESPN BET had 87.8% of its spread handle backing the Pack, the most of any team on Sunday, and they joined the Falcons as popular moneyline single and parlay bets.
“The Browns comeback will be a tough one for many bettors, as Green Bay-Cleveland ended up as our most bet game of the early slate by total handle, and the Packers were the most popular moneyline selection of the day,” ESPN BET senior director Adrian Horton said over email. “The Falcons were the fifth-most popular moneyline pick, and both teams were easily among our most bet parlay legs.”
The two outright underdog wins must be a relief for sportsbooks, who had suffered through favorite wins for the NFL season’s first two weeks. According to analysis from financial services group Macquarie, NFL hold — or the percentage of money sportsbooks make off of all their bets — was at 8% through Week 2, down from the baseline average of 9.5%. Specifically, moneyline hold was calculated at -3% due to the amount of favorites coming through.
“What drew the biggest shock after years of being their biggest fans each week, we fully expected the Browns to miss the game-winning field goal,” Caesars Sportsbook head of football Joey Feazel said over email. “Instead, there were cheers on the trading floor, as we were stunned that this was not the Browns we were used to cheering for over the years.”
Sportsbooks will have two more chances to recoup early-season losses via big underdogs in Week 3: The New York Giants are 5.5-point underdogs against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night, while the Detroit Lions are 4.5-point underdogs for Monday night’s showdown with the Baltimore Ravens.
Odds & Ends
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Sunday afternoon’s showdown between the Los Angeles Rams and Philadelphia Eagles closed with the defending Super Bowl champions as 3.5-point favorites. The Eagles trailed 26-7 in the third quarter, at which point they were +2000 on the live moneyline, before launching a huge comeback that finished with them scoring a defensive TD on the final play of the game to win and cover by a final score of 33-26. It’s the first time a team holding the lead covered on a defensive touchdown in the last 10 seconds of a game since the Eagles did it in 2019 against Washington, according to ESPN Research.
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For the second week in a row, after Ravens RB Derrick Henry failed to find the end zone, two of the most popular and shortest odds Anytime Touchdown Scorers did not come through for bettors. Philadelphia Eagles RB Saquon Barkley (-160) and Falcons RB Bijan Robinson (-250) were both among the most-bet players to score on Sunday at the major sportsbooks, including second and third, respectively, at ESPN BET.
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With Sunday’s 41-20 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, the Tennessee Titans fall to 3-17 ATS under Brian Callahan, the worst ATS record for any head coach in the Super Bowl era (minimum of 10 games) and the worst 20-game start for any coach’s tenure, according to ESPN Research.
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Thirteen entries failed to submit their Week 3 pick for the Circa Survivor contest, resulting in an automatic elimination.
Sept. 19: Warren eyes history as OROY co-favorite
Doug Greenberg: Just like his team as a whole, Indianapolis Colts TE Tyler Warren has gotten off to an excellent start this season, racking up 11 catches and 155 yards across his first two NFL games. That production, along with meager starts for several of the preseason favorites, has propelled Warren to the top of the Offensive Rookie of the Year odds board.
Warren is tied with Tampa Bay Buccaneers WR Emeka Egbuka for the best odds to win the award at +425, per ESPN BET. Preseason favorites, Las Vegas Raiders RB Ashton Jeanty and Tennessee Titans QB Cam Ward, have fallen to a tie right behind them at +500.
Ward, Jeanty and Egbuka being in the favorite conversation makes a lot of sense given quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers are, historically, the ones that win the award: The longest drought among those three positions belongs to RBs, who haven’t seen one of their own win it since Saquon Barkley in 2018.
By contrast, a tight end winning Offensive Rookie of the Year is exceedingly rare: It has only happened once in NFL history and that was by Hall of Famer Mike Ditka back in 1961, before the Super Bowl era.
Further, Las Vegas Raiders TE Brock Bowers put up a historically great rookie season in 2024, leading the position in yards (1,194) and receptions (112), breaking Ditka’s rookie tight end receiving yards record, and even setting the record for receptions by a rookie, regardless of position. Not only was that not enough to win Offensive Rookie of the Year over Washington Commanders QB Jayden Daniels, it wasn’t even close according to oddsmakers, as ESPN BET made him only a +900 underdog at his shortest odds.
So for Warren to be sporting a favorite’s +425 for the award this early in the season likely says something about the competition he’s facing this season, as well as how oddsmakers are trying to get ahead of his potential liability later on. For now, he has only the 12th-most bets (2.9%) and 11th-most handle (2.8%) at ESPN BET, which also notes that he’s drawn the third-most tickets and money since the beginning of the season.
If Warren were to pull off the historic feat, he has a chance to make history in another way.
New York Giants LB Abdul Carter (+200) is still the favorite for Defensive Rookie of the Year after entering the season with the best odds. If both Penn State alumni were to win, it would be just the fourth time in NFL history that one school produced both Rookies of the Year in the same season, and the first time since 1997. Leaning into the storyline, ESPN BET posted a special market for Warren and Carter to both win the awards at +1500.
Sept. 15: Bengals’ odds plummet after Burrow injury
Joe Burrow‘s injured toe transformed the Cincinnati Bengals into Super Bowl long shots and underdogs to even make the playoffs.
Burrow, the Bengals’ star quarterback, will undergo surgery and miss a minimum of three months, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Monday Following the injury, the Bengals’ Super Bowl odds moved from 20-1 to 75-1 at ESPN BET. Cincinnati went from -155 favorites to make the playoffs on Sunday to +210 underdogs to reach the postseason at the sportsbook.
Burrow, at 11-1, was among the favorites to win regular-season MVP and attracted more than double the amount of bets of any other player at ESPN BET. On Monday, Burrow was taken off the board as a betting option on the MVP. While the Bengals’ futures odds took a big hit with Burrow’s injury, Cincinnati remained only a small underdog in its Week 3 road game at Minnesota. The Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas had the Vikings listed as 1.5-point favorites in their early line on the game that was available last week. The point spread had ticked up to Vikings -3.5 Monday before dropping back to Minnesota -2.5 Monday afternoon, after reports that Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy was battling an ankle injury and could miss Sunday’s game.
John Murray, vice president of the SuperBook, said the relatively small adjustment is mostly due to the quality of Cincinnati backup quarterback Jake Browning. “That speaks to the competency level of the backup,” Murray said of the line adjustment. “If Browning doesn’t play well today in relief of Burrow, you’re most likely looking at a bigger adjustment.” Browning threw for 242 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions, after replacing Burrow in the first half of the Bengals’ 31-27 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars