Seahawks Longest-Priced Defending Champion to Repeat in a Decade: Who Else Was Unfancied?

Sixty-to-one. Those were the odds you could’ve gotten on Seattle winning Super Bowl LX before the 2025 season kicked off. In fact, some outlets had them as long as +6600, the kind of number reserved for teams nobody above the equipment room actually believes in. Nine months later, the Seahawks stood in Santa Clara with the Lombardi Trophy, having taken New England apart 29-13 in one of the most suffocating Big Games in recent memory. 

Fast forward six months, however, and online betting sites once again aren’t big on Seattle’s hopes. Don’t get us wrong; this season’s Seahawks odds aren’t the +6600 they were 12 months ago, but they are out at +1400, well behind the rebuilt Los Angeles Rams (+500) as well as both the Buffalo Bills (+1000) and Baltimore Ravens (+1000). And much of that is down to the slow bleed that the defending champions’ offseason has proven to be. 

Seattle’s Slow Bleed 

Riq Woolen is gone. So is Coby Bryant. So is Boye Mafe — three holes stacked in the exact unit that just strangled New England’s offense in the biggest game of the year. The backfield is in flux too: Kenneth Walker III is out the door, Zach Charbonnet is still working back from a torn ACL, and the man penciled in to soak up carries is Jadarian Price, a rookie who didn’t start a single game in college across three years with Notre Dame. 

Now put the Rams next to that. Les Snead pulled off the kind of move that reshapes a market overnight — a blockbuster trade for Myles Garrett that vaulted LA’s price from +800 to +500 in a single afternoon. Add Trent McDuffie and a new deal for reigning MVP Matthew Stafford, and the books now consider the Rams the best team in football. 

But 2026 isn’t the first time that a defending Super Bowl champion has felt somewhat overlooked in the last decade. Here are three others that had similarly low expectations, despite the Lombardi Trophy resting safely in their trophy cabinet. 

2016 Denver Broncos: +1400

There’s a particular whiplash in watching a defense stay exactly as terrifying as it was in February while everything around it falls apart, and Denver 2016 is the clearest case study the league has produced this century. The “No Fly Zone” secondary, Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware off the edge — none of that went anywhere.

It was Peyton Manning who’d been fading, benched mid-season for Brock Osweiler, before wresting his job back on guts more than arm strength. The Broncos still won 12 games, survived Pittsburgh, edged New England 20-18 in the AFC Championship, then made a mockery of the spread against Cam Newton’s heavily favored Panthers — strip-sacking him over and over until Von Miller had a Super Bowl MVP trophy and a 24-10 win.

A month later, Manning retired, his final pass already thrown. Malik Jackson walked for Jacksonville money, Danny Trevathan left for Chicago, and the unit that had terrorized Super Cam was thinner than it had been in years. Denver handed the keys to Trevor Siemian, an unknown asked to replace a legend. 

The Broncos opened at 14-1 to repeat, behind the Patriots, Seahawks, and Steelers, dead level with Green Bay and Arizona — a champion priced as roughly the seventh-best team in football, because the market knew what an elite defense can’t do alone. The offence had nothing left without Manning pulling strings. Denver slipped to 9-7, missed the playoffs, and one of the decade’s most dominant defenses watched its title defense end from the outside looking in.

2022 Los Angeles Rams: +1100

If Denver’s collapse was about subtraction, the Rams’ was about a bill coming due. The 2021 title was an all-in build: Sean McVay traded for Matthew Stafford, then doubled down mid-season, adding Von Miller and signing Odell Beckham Jr. off the street. LA went 12-5, won the NFC West, and Cooper Kupp claimed the receiving triple crown. In Super Bowl LVI, OBJ tore his ACL in the second quarter, and Cincinnati led into the third before Stafford and Kupp strung together a 15-play, 79-yard march deep into the fourth, Aaron Donald sealing it with a fourth-down pressure on Joe Burrow for a 23-20 win.

Eight months later, none of that was standing. Miller cashed out for Buffalo money. Beckham never signed anywhere, still rehabbing the knee he’d wrecked on his own stadium’s grass. The Rams had also shipped out multiple future first-rounders to land Stafford and Miller, leaving almost nothing behind the stars. 

The books still opened LA around +1100, fourth-best behind Buffalo, Tampa Bay, and Kansas City. Then the roof came down: Kupp needed season-ending ankle surgery, Donald missed six games with a high ankle sprain, and Stafford suffered a spinal cord contusion that shut him down before Christmas. A team hoisting a trophy in February was 5-12 by January, watching the playoffs from home — arguably the ugliest title defense this century has produced.

2018 Philadelphia Eagles +1000

Philadelphia’s story is the strangest of the three, because the market never stopped believing in New England — it just never fully bought the Eagles either, even with a trophy in the case. The 2017 breakthrough was built on Carson Wentz playing MVP-level football before his knee gave out in Week 14, and Nick Foles, a career backup once considered a punchline, inherited a season that wasn’t supposed to be his. 

The Eagles still went 13-3, thumped Atlanta, then blitzed Minnesota 38-7 in the NFC Championship, before Philadelphia went into Super Bowl LII as underdogs by roughly 4.5 to 5 points against Brady and Belichick and refused to play like it — Foles caught a touchdown pass on the “Philly Special” and the Eagles won 41-33 for the franchise’s first title.

There was no roster exodus that offseason — Foles stayed on as insurance, Wentz began the long road back, Doug Pederson stayed at the helm. Still, New England opened as the clear favorite to reclaim their throne at roughly +550, with Philadelphia a distant second at +850, despite holding the trophy. 

That caution proved right, just not how anyone expected: Wentz returned, only to fracture a bone in his back in December, forcing Foles back under center for one more miracle — a 16-15 win over Chicago sealed by the “double doink” — before a 20-14 road loss at top-seeded New Orleans ended it. Not a collapse, not a coronation — just a hard-fought defense the odds board had priced almost exactly right.