Cat Scratch Reader
The betting conversation over the last couple of days has centered on the many futures odds that FanDuel has offered for the Carolina Panthers’ wildly unpredictable 2025 season. In short, nobody is favoring them to do much of anything. The same can be said, however, for the rest of the NFC South. So how long are Carolina’s odds really? Let’s take a look.
FanDuel Sportsbook has the Carolina Panthers at +420 to take the division. That places them third in the betting odds. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are barely favored at -105, followed by the Atlanta Falcons at +220, and the New Orleans Saints take their rightful place in the cellar at +1300.
The whole division was a combined 2-9-1 in the preseason. That kind of all-around performance doesn’t give a lot of insight into who has taken steps forward from their 2024 seasons. Nobody, and largely by design, flashed any great talent or competency that will set them ahead in 2025. These odds are mostly based on the the Bucs having won the division four years running and the Saints having imploded. It is telling that the Bucs have flown under the radar this offseason, the Panthers and the Falcons and have had widely lauded drafts, the Saints have remained solvent, and yet the odds for this season predict the four teams to finish in the exact same order they did last season.
Part of that is predicting the Panthers and the Falcons. Two newer head coaches (yes, Raheem Morris counts as newer) with young quarterbacks are a pack of wildcards. Finding differences, particularly given Carolina’s major defensive overhaul that has yet to meaningfully see the field, is an exercise in make believe until we’ve seen the first couple of games of the regular season.
That’s why I actually like the Panthers odds here. Maybe not to win the whole division, but I like their chances to out perform these odds and make a real race out of claiming the NFC South title. The most intriguing item to me is the strength of schedule for each team, based off of their opponents 2024 records. Having finished third in the division in 2024, the Panthers play a theoretically weaker field than either the Bucs or the Falcons—who have almost identical strengths of schedule.
The Panthers played the Bucs down to the wire with good Bryce Young and a historically bad defense once last season. My back-of-the-napkin-math here has good Bryce Young + Tetairoa McMillan + an improved defense as greater than Baker Mayfield + a Haason Reddick. It’s a simplified view of the offseason for both teams, with the usual disclaimer that the wheels could fall off of the Panthers’ wagon at any moment, but I think it holds up.
The biggest disconnect between sportsbooks and fans is that Carolina is largely being judged on the whole of their 2024 season by the one and on the last seven weeks of it by the other. In those last seven weeks,...
