According to the Caesar Sportsbook in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Chiefs are 6/1 favorites to win Super Bowl LV, followed by the Baltimore Ravens at 7/1 and the San Francisco 49ers at 8/1.
On Sunday, the Chiefs returned to the Super Bowl for the first time in half a century and brought back the Lombardi Trophy to Kansas City after defeating the 49ers 31-20.
The Chiefs entered the game as a 1.5-point favorite but found themselves trailing 20-10 with just over eight minutes left, before Patrick Mahomes engineered a comeback that will go down in history.
The quarterback led Kansas City to score on three consecutive drives as the Chiefs put up 21 unanswered points and Andy Reid finally got his hands on the Lombardi Trophy in his 21st season in the NFL.
With 221 career wins between regular season and playoffs, Reid entered Super Bowl LIV as the sixth most successful coach in NFL history.
However, while the five coaches above him have a combined 24 titles together, Reid was still looking for his first ring as head coach.
The search came to a triumphant end in Miami and the 61-year-old is eager to hold the Lombardi Trophy aloft again next year.
“I’m really excited about it,” he was quoted as saying by ESPN. “You get one, you want to go get another one.”
With Mahomes still only 24 and a young core around him—the average age for their 53-man roster is 26.5 years—the Chiefs look poised to be the team to beat in the AFC for the foreseeable future.
No team has won back-to-back NFL titles since the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl XXXII and XXXIII.
In fact, the strongest challenge for the Chiefs may well come from within the same conference, with the Ravens sure to be desperate to reach the Super Bowl next season.
Baltimore finished with an NFL-best 14-2 record, before suffering a shock loss at home in the divisional round against the Tennessee Titans.
Like the Chiefs do with Mahomes, the Ravens possess a generational talent at quarterback in Lamar Jackson and it does not seem fanciful to imagine Kansas City and Baltimore to be regular guests in the AFC Championship over the next few seasons.
Third-favorites in the eyes of the bookmakers, the 49ers enjoyed an almost perfect season at least until the final eight minutes on Sunday.
Kyle Shanahan turned a team that had gone 4-12 last season into one that finished 13-3 in the current campaign, but the loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV will raise some questions over the 49ers.
San Francisco has a number of key roster decisions to make and will be well aware than nine of the last 20 Super Bowl runners-up did not make the playoffs the following season.
Behind the 49ers, the New Orleans Saints and the New England Patriots are 11-1 and 14-1 shots to be celebrating in Tampa, Florida, next year.
Both franchises, however, face a potentially defining offseason with Drew Brees and Tom Brady set to become free agents next month.
The veteran quarterbacks have both kept their options open and could return to their current teams, but could also move elsewhere and Brees has admitted he’s already considered retirement.
