Trapped between the Seattle Seahawks and Dallas Cowboys the Arizona Cardinals have the seventh best odds in winning Super Bowl LI.
The Arizona Cardinals rank seventh in the latest Super Bowl LI odds released yesterday by betting site Bovada as reported by CBSSportsLine. The team, with 16-to-1 odds trails a pack of teams with 10-to-1 odds including the NFC Champion Carolina Panthers, recently QB-less and Sanchez infused Denver Broncos, Green Pay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. Division Rival Seattle also places above the Cardinals in this latest ranking.
While odds are nothing but the feeling for a team, and at this time, incredibly early not knowing how the draft or the rest of free agency will turn out, but the Arizona Cardinals coming in at seventh says a lot about where the team is, and where it is going.
In a way, the fall to seventh may be a kick in the teeth a bit to a team that finished the regular season 13-3 with a trip to Super Bowl only encumbered by listless play at the wrong time, but the team’s offensive downtrend as the season wore on has to have bookies a bit nervous as to how the team will start out. With some big free agency losses looming, including Bobbie Massie, and possibly key members of the team’s secondary, it seems only reasonable that the team may fall.
At the same time, the consistent placing in the top 10 of a 32 team league has to make the front office of the Cardinals feel better, knowing they are consistently putting out the best team they can and have built up enough respect around the gambling arena that they can be trusted to put a quality product on the field come September.
Again, there is a lot of offseason to deal with before the teams take the field even for preseason match-ups and we can expect the make-up of this team’s roster to churn quite a bit over the course of the next several months. Injuries, cuts and signings are a nature of the beast throughout the summer, OTAs and the preseason.
Enough is certain, the team has a a chance to really go far, and with the pieces they’ve added over the last couple of days, there is a certain aura of optimism that has persisted over the course of the last few seasons that refuses to die down.