Ravens players return to full team practice at Owings Mills on Thursday, but the coaches and assistants have been in meetings all week in preparation to face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 47.
So the afterglow of their big win over the New England Patriots is over. The team’s focus is now on the 49ers.
If the Baltimore Ravens are to become Super Bowl champions, they’ll have to beat the odds again to do it. Bookmakers in Las Vegas have the San Francisco 49ers 4.5-point favorites over the Ravens in the Super Bowl, amid expectations this could be the heaviest bet title game ever.
At William Hill, which operates 75 betting parlors in Nevada, oddsmakers opened the game with the 49ers a 5-point favorite, as did some other books. But it was quickly bet down to 4.5 points, a line that seemed to be holding in the early betting.
“We had what I consider a large bet come in at 5 points and moved down from there,” said Vaccaro, who said he believes the line will hold between 4 and 4 1/2 points until close to the day of the game.
Baltimore already is the first underdog of more than a touchdown to win both the division and championship playoff rounds. The Ravens were 7.5-point underdogs to the Patriots before beating them 28-13 to win the AFC title game.
“The Ravens are the hot team now but they’re not getting a lot of support from the public,” Kornegay said. “These are very similar teams, both can run the ball well, play smash mouth football and have two quarterbacks playing very good football.”
Last year’s game between the New York Giants and the Patriots drew $93.9 million in wagers in Nevada, just under the record $94.5 million bet in 2006 when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-10. Those who follow the betting industry closely say hundreds of millions of dollars — possibly even billions — will be bet on the game by the time the offshore sports books and illegal bookmakers take in their share.
Like the LVH, some books in Las Vegas opened the game at 4.5 points, while others put their number up at 5. Most of the major Las Vegas sports books were at 4.5 points, with a few listing the 49ers at 4 points Sunday night.
The over/under, where bettors can wager on whether the two teams will combine for more or less points than the posted number, was at 49 points at most books.
Point spreads fluctuate on games, especially the most heavily bet ones, according to how much oddsmakers take on each team. A big bet on one team can sometimes send a line moving a half point one way or another, though most movement normally takes place in the days just before the game.
Nevada oddsmakers also post hundreds of proposition bets on the game, everything from who will win the coin flip to which quarterback will have more passing yards. Those bets aren’t expected to be posted fully until later in the week.
Casinos have lost once only once on the Super Bowl the last 10 years, in 2008 when bettors gambled $92 million and casinos lost $2.57 million as the Giants beat New England, 17-14.
Meanwhile Ravens HC John Harbaugh played down the big-to-do over the “Brother Bowl” angle…he scoffed at the historical significance of brothers coaching against each other in the Super Bowl.
“It’s not exactly like Churchill and Roosevelt,” he said.
An hour after John Harbaugh spoke to reporters Monday, Jim Harbaugh repeated the same theme, calling this milestone family reunion “a blessing and a curse.”
“The blessing because it’s my brother’s team and also personally I played for the Ravens,” Jim Harbaugh said. “The curse part would be all that talk of two brothers coaching against each other in the Super Bowl— and what that takes away from the players that are in the game.”
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