For any football fan, watching the Super Bowl when your team isn’t in it is always bittersweet. For a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, the knife is twisted by the presence in Arizona of the noisy neighbors in Philadelphia, who stand a real chance of marching off with the Vince Lombardi Trophy. It would be their second, which is notably less than six, so bragging rights stay in the Steel City overall. But as the table below shows, all the big sportsbooks have the Eagles on the winning side of this finely-balanced game, with top crypto sportsbook Cloudbet standing out as having the most lucrative odds for sports bettors.
So any Steelers fan could be forgiven for wanting to give this one a miss and see what’s on other channels. But let’s be honest about a couple of things. First of all, no TV network is going to put anything good on opposite the most-watched broadcast of the year. Secondly, as galling as it is to see the Eagles make the Super Bowl when the Steelers so narrowly missed the playoffs, it’s important to see where Mike Tomlin’s team will need to make improvements in order to be where their neighbors are this time next year.
Building on solid foundations
It’s not the case that the Eagles have that many more game-breaking players than we do. What they do have is a lot more experience right now. Jalen Hurts is a young QB, but he’s had a few seasons to iron out the wrinkles in his game; something Kenny Pickett shows signs of doing himself. Miles Sanders probably isn’t a ton better than Najee Harris, if at all. On defense, the Eagles have playmakers that probably put them ahead of the Steelers. But the foundations are clearly there for Pittsburgh, including three Pro Bowlers. A good draft in 2023, and we could be where they are pretty soon.
Making it interesting
We might as well accept that the Eagles are good. Overall, better than the Steelers right now. And while we’re accepting that, we might as well accept that there is potentially money to be made, so we have something to celebrate at the end of the night, whoever wins. Thanks to Cloudbet’s decision not to spend money on advertising, and their efficient crypto payouts, you’ll get better odds on every Super Bowl market and be able to bank your winnings before the winning owner hosts the Lombardi Trophy into the Glendale nighttime. Which will be all the better if you’ve backed the Chiefs and they snatch the win
See what we need to do to get there
Win or lose, the Chiefs are hard to deny as the AFC’s best team both now and in the last few years. This is their third Super Bowl appearance in the last four seasons, with the other one seeing them lose at the penultimate step. They’re the team that everyone else in the conference needs to look at unseating. Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals have shown it’s possible. If the Eagles are to come out of this as winners, they’ll need to expose some weaknesses in the Chiefs, too. That’s going to be important for any AFC team in the years to come, particularly anyone with dreams of supplanting them as AFC Champions.
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