If there’s a possibility of something happening in the Super Bowl, you can bet there will be a prop bet available for it. The NFL’s championship game is the biggest day of the year for prop betting, as roughly 70% of the action will come on something besides the spread or the totals for the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Prop bets can be a fun way to bet on the Super Bowl because they’re a game within a game. Even if the game turns into a blowout, a prop bet can keep you interested because there’s always the chance that your bet could cash in the dying minutes.
Whether you’re concerned with Patrick Mahomes’ completions, Miles Sanders’ rushing yards, or the Gatorade bath at the end of the game (yes, you can bet that), there’s always a play to make.
With so many options available, you don’t want to overload yourself and try to do too much. For prop betting, your strategy remains the same: make smart, sensible bets that you have a good reason to take. If you’re making a fun bet, be sure of the risk that you’re taking and only bet what you can afford to lose. With that strategy in mind, here are a few of your top options for Super Bowl prop plays!
[clutchbuzz_betnow id=’191690′]
National Anthem: Chris Stapleton Over 125 Seconds (-125)
I’m including this strictly for the people who want to get a bet in before the action starts. The coin toss is also a popular play, but a coin toss is literally that, a flip of a coin. You can’t do any research on it at all, so it’s one to stay away from.
The national anthem, on the other hand, can be researched and intelligently played. The average person takes 119 seconds to sing the national anthem, so Chris Stapleton only has to be slightly slower than average for this bet to cash. And Stapleton likes to drag out his notes. He’s an old-school country singer and takes his time with his songs. Only two songs on his four albums have ever lasted less than three minutes, so he’s not one to get things over and done with quickly. If his career is any indication, he’s going to take his time and put his full voice into the song. The over should be the play here.
Super Bowl MVP: Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles (+120) and Chris Jones, Kansas City Chiefs (+4000)
The MVP of the Super Bowl is a fun prop bet, and taking a quarterback gives you a leg up in that department. That’s because quarterbacks get the most attention and are usually the player that wins the MVP as a result. In 32 out of 56 Super Bowls, a quarterback has been named MVP, so taking the quarterback you think will win the game gives you the best chance to correctly pick the winning player.
Picking the winner can be difficult, however, so this isn’t a bet you want to put too much of a stake in winning. This is simply a bet for fun to back a player that you like and a player that needs to contribute in order for their team to win. This is also a good place to take a longshot, and given how well Chris Jones has played this season, he might be a big part of a Chiefs victory.
Jones leads the Kansas City pass rush, and the Chiefs are going to have to make Jalen Hurts uncomfortable in order to throw off the Eagles’ attack. Defensive players winning the MVP aren’t common, but they can happen, and if one’s going to be named MVP, Jones is most likely the one.
Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes currently have the shortest odds to win Super Bowl MVP at +125 👀 pic.twitter.com/64VTpFU68w
— ClutchBet (@ClutchBetSB) February 5, 2023
Jalen Hurts Touchdown Pass in First Quarter (+210)
If the Eagles are going to win this game, they have to do it by staying true to themselves, and that means scoring early. Philadelphia is a first-half team, as the Eagles lead the league in points scored in the first 30 minutes. Plus, the Eagles are well aware of who’s on the other side of the field when they don’t have the football. Hurts is going to have to put up numbers to keep Patrick Mahomes from getting the Chiefs in front, and that means he’s likely to try for a passing touchdown in the early part of the game.
Kansas City doesn’t have a bad first-half defense, but the Eagles have excelled at putting points on the board early in the game. Philadelphia should be ready to roll from the beginning, and the Chiefs’ defense is weaker against the pass than against the run. A Hurts TD pass at these odds offers great value.
Keep an eye on Jalen Hurts Super Bowl rushing props 👀 pic.twitter.com/A7F7FFx9vy
— PFF NFL Podcast (@PFFNFLPod) January 31, 2023
Miles Sanders Over 13.5 Rushing Attempts (+105)
The fact that the Eagles blew through their two playoff opponents should pay some dividends here. Philadelphia pulled Sanders early in the game against New York and San Francisco because the Eagles had the game done and dusted well before the third quarter, allowing them to work backups into the lineup. That led Kenneth Gainwell to get far more carries than usual and a low workload for Sanders, which shouldn’t repeat itself here.
Kansas City should be able to put up enough points to keep the Eagles’ starters in the game from beginning to end, which means Sanders should get plenty of work this time around. If the Eagles lead in the fourth quarter, Sanders and not Gainwell will get the bulk of the work. With positive odds for him to break 13 carries when he averages 15, this bet should work out well.
A @SuperBookSports specialty — the Super Bowl props. pic.twitter.com/YxRdDAnEJF
— Vic Lombardi (@VicLombardi) February 3, 2023
Will There Be a Safety? Yes (+750)
This is one of the most popular bets on the board for casual bettors because all it takes is one play to go the right way and you win more than seven times the amount you originally bet. But before you make this play, make sure you’re aware of the risk that you’re taking with this play. Only nine Super Bowls out of 56 have seen a safety, which means you’ve got around an 84% chance of this bet failing.
But again, all it takes is one play to see this bet cash, and if it’s going to cash in the big game, this might be the one for it to happen. Philadelphia and Kansas City feature the two best pass rushes in the NFL, with the Eagles leading the league with 70 sacks on the season. Kansas City follows with 55 sacks, and we’ve already mentioned Chris Jones as a potential MVP candidate. If either team finds itself pinned inside its own five-yard line, safety becomes a very likely outcome given these defenses’ abilities.
The flip side of that is that Hurts and Mahomes are both mobile quarterbacks, but even that can work out fine for the purposes of this bet. Mobile quarterbacks love to try to extend plays, and that sometimes works to their detriment with more yards lost than simply taking the sack. Again, this is unlikely to happen, but if it does, you’ll really cash on this play.
Gatorade Bath Color: Orange (+350) or Yellow/Green (+300)
You might think there’s no science to picking the winning team’s Gatorade color, but there’s actually some data that you can use. One of the first things to remember is that teams are superstitious, and they will take any detail that they think gives them even the slightest advantage. As such, betting on the team’s colors is often an advantage.
Over the past eight Super Bowls, the coach has gotten doused seven times, and five of them (Patriots twice, Broncos, Rams and Eagles) matched the winning team’s colors. You might be surprised to see the Eagles here, given that green isn’t a common Gatorade color, but for betting purposes, green and yellow are counted as the same color, making the Eagles’ yellow a winning play in 2018.
So why isn’t red-listed here, given that the Chiefs are in the Super Bowl?
Well, because Kansas City is one of the exceptions to that rule. The Chiefs won three years ago, and when they did, they opted for orange. Given that the same coaching staff and many of the same players return from that game, the Chiefs are likely to use orange again. Plus, red has never once won this prop bet, even though Kansas City and Tampa Bay have both won titles.
If you’ve paid attention to the lines, you might have noticed that blue is the heavy favorite to win the prop play. That’s because blue has hit in three of the past four Super Bowls and four of eight overall. However, there’s a caveat there: three of the four teams to use blue also use blue as one of their team’s colors.
Only the Buccaneers — a red team, and red has again never won — opted to use blue without using blue as a team color. When in doubt, either take a team color or back orange — which has been used five times in the big game despite the Broncos being the only orange team to win a title since 2001.
Super Bowl prop bets aren’t easy to hit, but they’re a lot of fun to make a play on. If you’re looking for a way to make every minute of the game interesting, making a prop play or two can be an excellent way to do so and make some money in the process.
Credits on Featured Image: Albert Pujols getting a Gatorade shower courtesy of Mike Trout after recording his 3,000th hit. (Kirk & Barb Nelson)
