Colts provide big bang for your buck in Super Bowl futures

We’re entering the final third of the 2021 National Football League season, and the playoffs are in sight. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are +500 to repeat as Super Bowl champions, and they’re certainly deserving favorites. However, I’ll focus on another team for the second time this season, and in an odd twist, it’s the team the Bucs beat this past weekend.

Colts provide exceptional value in Super Bowl odds

The Indianapolis Colts are currently +4000, but they gave Tampa Bay all they could handle Sunday before falling 38-31. Despite that outcome, I think there’s plenty of reason to think Indy provides value at that price.

At 6-6, the Colts are two games behind the Tennessee Titans, who currently lead the AFC South. However, the Titans are banged up. They lost Derrick Henry to a season-ending injury earlier this season, and top wide receiver A.J. Brown missed Sunday’s loss to the New England Patriots.

Indy was rolling before loss to Tampa Bay

While Tennessee is reeling, Indianapolis won five of six prior to Sunday’s near-miss. Furthermore, their six losses this year include single-score defeats to the Rams, Ravens, Titans, and Bucs. Obviously, swinging the outcomes of a few of those games would have been ideal, but that’s why we’re getting +4000, as opposed to something in the +2500 range (which is where the Titans currently sit).

Colts will benefit from a soft remaining schedule

The Colts don’t have the toughest schedule from here on out, either. They’ll be heavy favorites in two of them (at Houston Sunday, at Jacksonville to end the season), and while they’ll be decided underdogs at Arizona on Christmas Day, their other two contests are home games against New England and Las Vegas.

Going 3-2 may be enough to secure a playoff berth in an AFC filled with teams insisting on cannibalizing one another’s chances. A 4-1 stretch would almost certainly assure one, and we’ve gotten this far without discussing the emergence of Jonathan Taylor, who’s become one of the top running backs in the league. If he continues his Pro Bowl-caliber play, he could drive the Colts to a playoff spot, and in a conference where no team seems head-and-shoulders above the rest, that’s enough for me to recommend a flyer.