For the second consecutive season, the NFC champion will play for a Super Bowl title in its home stadium. The Los Angeles Rams follow last year’s NFC champ Tampa Bay and will play at SoFi Stadium, their home field.
Ironically, the Rams will not be the home team. In even-numbered years, the AFC champion is the Super Bowl home team. Also interesting is the Rams home record of 5-3. They were actually better on the road winning seven of nine games.
Will the Rams continue the trend of NFC champion playing at home and winning the Super Bowl? It’s surely possible. Here’s a look at 2022 NFL Super Bowl betting trends and stats.
The Point Spread
Plenty of bettors will wager on Super Bowl LVI’s point spread, which happens to favor the Rams by 4.5 points. It’s worth noting that Super Bowl favorites are 35-20 straight up but just 27-26-2 ATS.
What’s very interesting is that the straight up winner of the Super Bowl is 47-6-2 ATS. The straight up winner has covered the spread in each of the last 12 Super Bowls. The last favorite that didn’t cover the spread was the Pittsburgh Steelers who beat Arizona by four as 6.5-point favorites.
Win the Turnover Battle
Keep an eye on the turnover battle in this year’s Super Bowl. Teams that have more turnovers have only won six of the 55 previous Super Bowls. Those teams are also just 8-36-8 ATS.
For the season, neither the Rams nor the Bengals were particularly strong in this department. The Rams forced 25 turnovers but ended up with a +2 turnover margin. The Bengals were even with 21 takeaways and 21 turnovers. In the postseason though, Cincy has won the turnover battle in all three playoff games and is +5.
Longshot
If you were fortunate enough to get in at the beginning of the season, the Bengals were given 150-1 odds to win the Super Bowl. The biggest longshot at the beginning of an NFL season to win it all? That would be the Rams, of course.
In 1999, the Rams were 150-1 preseason longshots and the Greatest Show on Turf hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.
30 and Win
The magic number in Super Bowls since 1979 is 30. Since ’79 (the NFL made rules changes that led to more scoring), 26 teams have scored 30 or more points in the Super Bowl. Those 26 teams are 24-2 SU and 23-3 ATS.
The only team to score 30 points, win the Super Bowl, and fail to cover was the 2004 New England Patriots. They beat Carolina 32-29. The 2018 Patriots and the 2013 49ers each surpassed the 30-point mark but lost and did not cover.
Worth noting are the Rams and Bengals performances this season when scoring 30 or more points. The Rams hit the 30-point mark seven times and won all seven games. The Bengals went 6-1 in the seven games in which they totaled 30 or more points.
Throw Out the Records
The Rams finished the regular season with the better record – 12-5 compared to Cincy’s 10-7. Over the last 12 Super Bowls, the team with the poorer regular season record has won 11 times.
There have been 48 Super Bowls where teams had uneven records. Overall, the team with the better record is 29-19 all-time. That means at one point, teams with the superior record were 28-8.
Player Props
The season that Rams WR Cooper Kupp is having is one for the record books. He enters the Super Bowl having scored at least one touchdown in each of the Rams last five games (and eight of the last nine). Kupp is listed at -190 in the anytime TD Scorer prop and at +500 in the First TD Scorer and Last TD Scorer categories.
In 20 games this season, Kupp have gone over his receiving yards prop total 16 times. The O/U on Kupp’s receiving yards is set at 104.5 with odds of -115 on each side of the bet.