Los Angeles is the most dominant preseason Super Bowl favorite in years, and the market has already crowned Sean McVay's squad. The Rams sit at +550 to win Super Bowl LXI at DraftKings — no other team in the league is shorter than +1000, and the gap between L.A. and the field (5.1 percentage points over the Bills and Ravens) is the largest we've seen since the 2021 Chiefs. That's what a Myles Garrett trade does. But before you back the Rams with your rent money, ESPN's Bill Barnwell just ran the numbers on 35 years of preseason superteams, and the verdict is brutal: only two of the 15 biggest preseason favorites since 1990 actually won the Super Bowl. The rest? Heartbreak, chaos, and in one case, a 7-9 season that ended in the couch cushions.
The 15-team autopsy: two champions, 13 heartbreaks
Barnwell went back through the 15 largest preseason favorites since 1990 — the teams that truly separated from the pack before a single snap — and the results read like a horror anthology. The 2007 Patriots went 16-0, averaged a 20-point win, and still lost the Super Bowl to Eli Manning's Giants. The 2017 Patriots lost to Nick Foles. The 2001 Rams — the Greatest Show on Turf with an MVP quarterback — lost to a Patriots team led by an injured Tom Brady making his 10th career start. The 1997 Packers had three-time MVP Brett Favre and still got helicoptered by John Elway. The 2021 Chiefs, the most recent team to hold a bigger edge over the field than this Rams squad, blew a 21-3 AFC title game lead to the Bengals.
Here's the part that should make Rams fans nauseous: among the teams that were projected to be MORE dominant relative to the rest of the league than the 2026 Rams, the record is 0-for-8. Zero Super Bowls. The 2002 Rams — the team this roster most resembles, a reigning powerhouse returning an MVP and all its weapons — went 7-9 with a minus-19 turnover margin and missed the playoffs entirely. The 2008 Patriots missed the postseason with 11 wins. The 1990 49ers, chasing a three-peat with Joe Montana, lost at home to Jeff Hostetler. The one that got closest to the finish line and still failed — the 1998 Packers, bounced in the wild-card round by The Catch II — is a warning that even a dominant regular season can evaporate in one January possession.
The math nobody wants to hear: the market is already right
Now for the twist that separates real analysis from the talking heads: the market isn't stupid, and "fade the Rams" isn't the edge you think it is. Barnwell converted the betting lines into implied probabilities, and those 15 favorites should have won 2.35 Super Bowls based on their prices. They won exactly two. The +550 number on the Rams — an implied 12.5% chance, roughly the success rate of a fourth-and-13 conversion — is almost perfectly calibrated to history.
That's the uncomfortable truth of this story: the Rams aren't a lock, and they aren't a sucker bet either. They're a lottery ticket with better odds than anyone else's. The 87.5% outcome is losing. The 12.5% outcome is a parade. The market knows it. The media narrative — "the Rams are inevitable" — is the only thing priced wrong, because narrative isn't priced at all.
Stafford's back is the real superteam storyline
So what actually sinks a superteam? Barnwell's history lesson points at one thing above all: the quarterback cliff. Matthew Stafford just won MVP at age 38 — but so did Rich Gannon, who got hurt seven games into his follow-up season and retired. So did Aaron Rodgers, who fell from first to 26th in QBR at age 39. Peyton Manning threw for 39 touchdowns at 38, then got benched for Brock Osweiler at 39. The Rams are one awkward hit on Stafford's surgically-repaired back away from the 2022 version of this franchise — the defending champs who went 5-12 when Stafford, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp missed a combined 28 games.
And this is where the Garrett trade gets interesting. Los Angeles shipped Jared Verse and three picks to Cleveland for the reigning Defensive Player of the Year — a win-now move that stripped the future to supercharge the present. The result: a roster with zero margin for error, a 39-year-old quarterback, a Puka Nacua who has no league-wide replacement, and a special teams unit that was 26th in DVOA last season and cost the Rams the NFC title game on a muffed punt. McVay fired the coordinator and replaced the kicker, but Harrison Mevis has attempted exactly two career field goals beyond 50 yards. The 2025 Rams were second in DVOA and still lost three times to Seattle — including a 38-37 December collapse after leading by 16 in the fourth quarter, and a 31-27 conference championship loss.
The NFC West is the actual trap
Everyone keeps asking "can the Rams win the Super Bowl?" The better question is "can they even win the division?" The Seahawks — the defending Super Bowl champions who return their young core — beat L.A. three times in 2025, and the Rams face the second-toughest schedule in football per ESPN's FPI. Throw in a healthier 49ers team and the NFC West is a four-game knife fight before January even starts. If you're shopping the futures market, the value isn't on the Rams or against them — it's on the idea that the West beats the champion up before it ever reaches Phoenix.
The prediction: history repeats, with a twist
Here's the call. The Rams will win the NFC West and reach the conference title game — the talent is real, and Garrett turns a good defense into a nightmare. But they will not lift the Lombardi in Glendale on Feb. 14. Stafford's health is the fulcrum, the Seahawks own the tiebreakers and the special teams still scare you, and 35 years of data says the most dominant preseason favorite cashes just 13% of the time. The smart play isn't to fade L.A. outright — it's to respect the market's 12.5% and remember that Valentine's Day in this league has a way of breaking the favorite's heart. The Rams are the best team in football. They are also, statistically, the most likely team to lose. Both things are true — and the second one is why +550 is the most dangerous number on the board.
Nathan Caldwell
Nathan Caldwell edits and writes multi-sport coverage for True Grit Sports, turning game notes, market movement, and key trends into readable context.