Super Bowl XLVIII Prop Bets

Spin the wheel and pick your favorite Super Bowl prop bets.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

Yesterday, we kicked off our Super Bowl Gambling preview with odds and picks for the player to score the first touchdown. I have more uncertainty surrounding those picks than I ever have before, and I fully expect to lose every penny I (would have) put down (if gambling were legal). The rest of the props, I feel a lot better about. On [insert semi-shady offshore gambling website here].com, there are pages and pages of different prop bets, way too many to list here. In all, there are over 450 different elements of the game you can bet on, up to and including whether or not Broncos' third-string Tight End Virgil Green will receive a pass. So instead of running through all of them (which would take days to write, hours to read, and may even exceed the character limit for a single post), let's only focus on the ones that are worth betting on.

Who Will Score First In The Super Bowl?

Will Marshawn Lynch be the first to score a Touchdown on Sunday?

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin)

I've nailed the "Who Will Score The First Touchdown?" Super Bowl prop bet in each of the last five Super Bowls, and I can even tell you who the winning players were - Anquan Boldin, Victor Cruz, Jordy Nelson, Pierre Garcon, and The Field (via Gary Russell).

My usual tactic is to identify two players on each team who seem likely to be involved early in the game, but this year that's a far too random proposition to be reliable. Denver has five players who are seemingly always on the field and always a threat - Knowshon Moreno, Demaryius Thomas, Julius Thomas, Eric Decker, and Wes Welker. All five of those players scored at least ten touchdowns in the regular season, and nobody else on the team had more than four. Meanwhile, Seattle has one clear pick - Marshawn Lynch - who scored nine more touchdowns from scrimmage (14) than any other player on the team (five - for Golden Tate, Doug Baldwin, and Zach Miller); after that, there's nobody on the team that has shown a penchant for scoring touchdowns regularly.