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Everybody and their mothers are betting on the Bills to beat the Jets on opening night, at least so far.
The Jets are 1.5-point underdogs to the Bills for the Monday night, Sept. 11 opener at MetLife Stadium.
BetMGM reports the Bills have been selected on 85% of the tickets (to the Jets’ 15%), and even more starkly, Buffalo has a 91% to 9% margin in total money bet on the game to this point.
The question is whether this is a premature snapshot of an emerging betting market, or an early sign that bettors across the country are not quite buying into the Jets as a Super Bowl contender after 12 years of not even making the playoffs.
“There is early lopsided action on the Bills but we expect the betting to even out closer to kickoff,” Seamus Magee, BetMGM’s trading team lead, told The Post. “Chiefs-Lions is the most-bet game currently and has five times the number of tickets compared to Jets-Bills.”
Magee points out that the point spread, which opened at Buffalo -1.5, has not changed despite the near-unanimous support for the Bills.
The Jets have won the 2023 NFL offseason championship with their trade for Aaron Rodgers, their signings of Allen Lazard and Dalvin Cook, the large contract extension for Quinnen Williams and the hype surrounding reigning rookies of the year Garrett Wilson and Sauce Gardner.
The team is getting the most respect it received in the betting futures markets in more than a decade.
Latest odds from BetMGM list the Jets at 18/1 to win the Super Bowl (tied for seventh-highest in the NFL) and +900 to win the AFC championship (fifth-highest in the conference).
Their +250 odds to win the AFC East ranks just below the Bills (+130) and ahead of the Dolphins (+275) and Patriots (+750).
And some Jets appear near the top of the lists in individual award markets, including Gardner +900 to win Defensive Player of the Year, Rodgers 16/1 to be named regular-season MVP and Robert Saleh 16/1 to capture Coach of the Year.
Betting on the NFL?
According to Magee, a significant amount of that backing at BetMGM is coming from its New York and New Jersey sportsbooks.
“Local teams always get additional support from home-state bettors,” Magee said. “The Jets are no different — 5.5% of the bets [nationwide] are on the Jets to win the Super Bowl, but in New York and New Jersey, they are receiving 14.8% of the bets, the most.”
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