NFL 2026 is almost here and the Super Bowl race looks wide open

It is a pretty good way to start a new season. Seattle now has to deal with something it did not have a year ago, the pressure that comes with being defending champion. New England, meanwhile, gets an immediate chance to put February's defeat behind them.

There is another historic game just one day later. The Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers will meet in Melbourne as the NFL stages a regular-season game in Australia for the first time.

Those games should provide an entertaining opening, but the bigger question heading into September is the same one fans ask every year. Who is actually going to win the Super Bowl?

The Rams are the early favorites

Right now, the bookmakers like the Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams are generally available at around +500 to win Super Bowl LXI, although the exact price varies between sportsbooks. Buffalo, Seattle and Baltimore are among the teams closest to them in the betting.

There are good reasons for Los Angeles being at the top. Matthew Stafford is coming off an MVP season, the Rams reached the NFC Championship Game last year and they once again have a roster that looks capable of playing deep into January.

Buffalo being among the favorites will surprise nobody either. The Bills have been close for years with Josh Allen at quarterback, but close is all they have been. Every season seems to begin with people asking whether this will finally be the year Buffalo gets over the line. In 2026, we are asking it again.

Seattle finds itself in a completely different position. Last year the Seahawks could play without the expectations that followed some of the league's bigger names. Winning the Super Bowl changed that. Nobody will be overlooking them this time.

Then there are the usual suspects and a few teams hoping to join them. Baltimore, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Houston are all being taken seriously, while Denver is another team that could be interesting after making significant progress.

What makes the season particularly difficult to predict is that there is no team that feels unbeatable. The Rams might be favorites, but the gap between them and the rest is hardly enormous.

There has been no shortage of offseason talking points

A lot can change between the Super Bowl and Week 1, and this offseason has been another reminder of that.

Quarterback situations have attracted plenty of attention, as they always do. Teams have also spent the spring and summer reshaping their rosters through the draft, free agency and trades.

Now injuries are beginning to enter the conversation as well.

That is one of the dangers of making predictions before September. A team can look like a genuine contender in June and suddenly have a very different outlook after losing an important starter during training camp.

It is also why NFL odds can move so quickly at this time of year. One injury, trade or unexpected quarterback decision can be enough for sportsbooks to rethink how they rate a team.

For fans, all of that is part of the fun. Everyone has an opinion before Week 1. Within a month, some of those preseason predictions will look very clever and others will look ridiculous.

The NFL continues to look beyond the United States

Another big story this year is how international the NFL schedule has become.

There will be nine international games in 2026, more than ever before. London remains part of the schedule, but the league is also heading to places including Melbourne, Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

The Melbourne game between the Rams and 49ers is perhaps the most eye-catching. It will be the first NFL regular-season game played in Australia, and the league has chosen a genuine NFC West rivalry rather than a matchup with little riding on it.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has also spoken openly about the possibility of eventually having a franchise outside the United States.

That may still be some way off, but the direction of travel is obvious. The NFL no longer sees international games as an occasional novelty. It is trying to build a much larger audience outside North America.

Sports betting has changed dramatically in the US

The way Americans follow the NFL has changed in another way too.

When the Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018, states were given the ability to legalize and regulate sports betting themselves. Since then, legal betting has spread rapidly across the country.

For many NFL fans, placing a legal bet from a phone is now completely normal. That would have sounded very different little more than a decade ago.

The growth of legal betting has also created much more competition between sportsbooks. In states with several licensed operators, a bettor may have a number of places offering odds on exactly the same game.

The important thing is that those odds are not necessarily the same.

That is why it makes sense to compare odds before betting instead of automatically using the first sportsbook you open. You might have exactly the same opinion about a team but find a noticeably better price somewhere else.

Take Baltimore as a simple example. If you want to back the Ravens to win the Super Bowl and one sportsbook has them at +1100 while another offers +1300, nothing about your prediction has changed. You are still betting on Baltimore to become champion. You are simply getting a better potential return from one operator.

It sounds obvious, but it is something that can easily be overlooked.

And it is not just about Super Bowl betting. Prices can differ on spreads, moneylines, totals, player props and just about every other NFL market. The differences might sometimes look small, but they can add up for anyone who bets regularly throughout a 17-game season.

There is more to preseason betting than the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl gets most of the attention, but it is only one of the markets available before Week 1.

There are odds on every division, the AFC and NFC championships, which teams will reach the playoffs and how many regular-season games each team will win.

Then there are the player markets.

MVP is always one of the most discussed, particularly because of how important quarterbacks are to the award. There are also markets for Offensive Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and the league's top rookies.

These can change considerably before the season even starts.

A rookie who looks better than expected during preseason can quickly attract attention. A quarterback injury can completely change a team's projected win total. Even something as simple as a player winning a starting job can cause sportsbooks to adjust their numbers.

That does not mean the earliest odds are automatically the best ones. Sometimes waiting gives you information that is worth far more than the slightly bigger price you might have found a month earlier.

It does mean there is value in looking around and understanding what the market is saying before the games begin.

Now we get to find out who is actually good

This is the point of the NFL calendar when almost everyone can convince themselves their team has a chance.

The Rams look strong enough to justify being favorites. Buffalo has Josh Allen and another opportunity to finally turn years of promise into a championship. Seattle has the Lombardi Trophy and now has to prove it can do it all again.

Kansas City remains difficult to dismiss while Patrick Mahomes is playing quarterback. Baltimore has enough talent to be dangerous. Philadelphia, Houston and Denver all have reasons to believe they can be part of the conversation as well.

Some of those predictions will be right while plenty will not be. That is what makes Week 1 so enjoyable. All the offseason arguments, roster rankings and Super Bowl odds suddenly become much less important once teams actually have to play.

On September 9, Seattle and New England will get things started. A few months later, only a handful of teams will still be standing.

Right now, though, almost everyone still has a chance. And that might be the best part of a new NFL season.