NFL training camps are really getting going now and players are dreaming of playoff wins and Super Bowl glory. For most teams, things won’t work out quite as they are planning, though, and someone has to finish with the worst record each year. That’s the betting market we’re looking at here: predicting the team that will finish with the worst regular-season record in the NFL. It comes with its own consolation prize of the first pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, of course, unless the team in question had planned poorly and already traded away that pick!
So, which teams should we be targeting? The history books suggest that any team that had a winning record last year should be safe. The last team to end up with the first pick after a winning year the season before was the Houston Texans in 2013, when they somehow managed to follow a 12-4 year by going 2-14 — after a 2-0 start! The Cardinals’ 3-13 year that handed them the first overall pick which they used on Kyler Murray came off an 8-8 season, but every other recent backmarker team had also had a losing record the year before. These things can happen in pairs, too, as it can take more than a year to turn things around, even with high draft picks to use. The Browns went 1-15 and 0-16 in back-to-back years, while the Jaguars have been the NFL’s worst team for 2 straight years, even though they improved from 1-15 to 3-14 last season in the Urban Meyer debacle.
A year is a long time in the NFL, and while the Jaguars were +1300 fifth-favorites to have the worst record last year, the fourth favorites were the Super Bowl-bound Cincinnati Bengals at +1100!
Let's take a look at the latest odds and the best bets to be made.