The early betting action on Super Bowl LII had been evenly divided between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles at MGM’s sportsbooks in Las Vegas.
It’s not anymore.
On Wednesday, a bettor placed a “multimillion-dollar” bet on the underdog Eagles, according to MGM vice president of race and sports Jay Rood.
Rood declined to reveal the exact amount of the bet, but told ESPN that it was multimillions, making it one of the largest reported bets in recent years in Nevada.
“Obviously, we’re pretty heavy Eagles now,” Rood said.
Rood said he had dealt with the customer before, but refused to provide any further details.
He also would not say if the bet was a money-line wager or a straight bet on the point spread.
The Super Bowl line at MGM dropped from New England -5.5 to -4.5 on Wednesday afternoon. The money line on the Eagles also moved Wednesday at MGM, dropping +180 to +170.
The Patriots are 5-point favorites at the majority of Nevada sportsbooks.
As of Wednesday night, MGM had taken twice as many point-spread bets on the Eagles as it had the Patriots, and eight times more money-line bets on Philadelphia than New England.
In addition to the multimillion-dollar bet, Rood said he had taken a couple of six-figure wagers and several five-figure bets ranging from $10,000 up to $80,000. He said the majority of the larger bets had been on New England, but some were placed on the Eagles as well.
“I’ve had inquiries for some big bets,” Rood said. “Last year, on Saturday and Sunday, we took probably a record number of six-figure wagers. I’m thinking the same kind of thing is going to happen this year.”
Million-dollar bets on Super Bowls are not uncommon. One or two normally show up, but they’re usually placed closer to game day. Getting the big bet with more than a week before kickoff is a bonus, Rood said.
“It’s a good position that we got it this early,” Rood said. “It gives us an opportunity to do what we’re supposed to do — try to put us in the best possible position.”
TEMPE, Ariz. — There’s risk with any head-coaching hire, especially when it’s the first time a coach sits in the lead chair. There’s greater pressure, more responsibility, higher expectations. No longer can he toil in relative anonymity. As the head coach, he’s the face of the franchise to a large extent.
Those factors haven’t deterred the Arizona Cardinals from taking chances on first-time head coaches. They’ve found success recently with the likes of Ken Whisenhunt, who led the Cardinals to their first Super Bowl, and then Bruce Arians, who set the franchise record with 50 wins — surpassing Whisenhunt’s previous team high. The Cardinals continued their trend this week, hiring first-time head coach Steve Wilks on Monday.
But Wilks’ hire comes with an extra degree or two of risk. And that can all be placed on team president Michael Bidwill.
Arians retired on Jan. 1, and the Cardinals entered the coaching search with two knowns: They didn’t have a quarterback, and they had a top-10 defense the past three seasons. After casting a wide net, as general manager Steve Keim pointed out during Wilks’ introductory news conference on Tuesday, and traveling “thousands and thousands of miles” and having “hundreds of hours” of conversations, as Bidwill said, the Cardinals picked Wilks. They liked his presence and his resume. They liked his accountability and his command.
But the risk in hiring Wilks, who was the defensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers, lies in the short-term future of the franchise.
Wilks is well aware of the Cardinals’ most dire need at the moment; he even called it the “elephant in the room.” The Cardinals don’t have a quarterback under contract for the 2018 season. There’s a chance they’ll draft one. There’s a chance they’ll sign one in free agency. Either way, the Cardinals’ offense will be rebuilding behind center while the defense is poised to keep chugging along like it has the past few seasons.
So herein lies the exact risk: Bidwill decided to hire a defensive mind who — although he said Tuesday he doesn’t run a scheme, rather a system that allows him to adapt to his personnel — likely will tweak and tinker with the defense to his preference. There’s no harm in that. Every coach has his own ways of doing things. And Wilks even said Tuesday that he’s “not trying to change too much.”
“If it’s not broke, don’t try and fix it,” Wilks followed.
Steve Wilks calls the Cardinals’ situation at quarterback the “elephant in the room.” Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
But for a team in desperate need of stability at quarterback, hiring a coach who’ll implement his system will lead to a learning curve and could stunt the progress of a defense that’s been one of the best over the past few seasons.
Bidwill sees the risk as, well, something different.
“The risk is we have potential to get better,” he said. “It’s a positive risk, which is we have potential to get better. When we look at our defense, it’s about the players on the field that are making the plays. So when I think about bringing in great leadership, I’m really excited about what he can bring.”
The Cardinals are entering a pivotal era in their long and storied existence. The tide had turned from them being a perennial sub-.500 team to being a franchise that’s expected to make the playoffs. Both Whisenhunt and Arians experienced success early in their tenures, which was followed by losing or .500 seasons.
Should Wilks follow the same path, he’ll win for two or three — maybe four — years and then the team will fall off. But based on the Cardinals’ current condition, winning may be easier said than done in the next season or two because of the coming turnover at quarterback. Instead of hiring a head coach whose main responsibility would be to help find a quarterback and then develop him, the Cardinals opted to hire a coach who’ll delegate that responsibility to his offensive coordinator.
That’s risk.
The Cardinals’ defense will carry this franchise for the next two or three years behind the likes of Chandler Jones, Patrick Peterson, Tyrann Mathieu and Markus Golden while the offense finds itself. Arizona needs to rebuild its receiving corps and restock its offensive line, all while finding its quarterback.
On Tuesday, Keim was asked what will be harder: finding a coach or a quarterback. He laughed.
“Quarterback,” he said.
And the Cardinals just took a franchise-defining risk in hiring a defensive coach when their most pressing need is on offense.
MOBILE, Ala. — Former Wyoming QB Josh Allen knows that Senior Bowl week is a big one for his NFL draft stock, and he didn’t shy away from any topics in a wide-ranging media session Monday night.
Unlike UCLA QB Josh Rosen, who has previously stated that he would like to avoid being drafted by the Cleveland Browns, Allen made no such claims about his draft position.
“It’s not about going as high as possible,” he said. “It’s about the right fit.”
Allen made it clear that he wants to prove he belongs and put to rest any concerns about his 56.1 career completion percentage at Wyoming, noting that he has been working this offseason on his footwork and “I’m way more accurate than that [number] shows.”
Admitting that he wasn’t playing “the greatest competition week in and week out” at Wyoming, Allen recognizes that this week is important to show he belongs. As to what NFL teams should know about him: “I want them to understand I have a high football IQ and that I love the game.”
Denver Broncos general manager John Elway scouted Allen at the 2017 Potato Bowl, in which Allen threw for three TDs in a 37-14 win. Allen didn’t meet Elway at that game, but he confirmed Monday that he had spoken with the Broncos and said that Elway’s being there “spoke volumes” about what Denver is trying to accomplish this offseason.
Baker Mayfield, the 2017 Heisman Trophy winner, will also be competing at the Senior Bowl, which gives the event a rare opportunity to showcase potential first-round QBs. Mayfield is clearly the more accomplished college QB, but Allen is looking forward to the challenge, saying, “It’s going to be fun competing with Baker.”
Allen went No. 1 overall in Mel Kiper’s first 2018 NFL mock draft and is Todd McShay’s third-ranked QB behind Sam Darnold and Rosen. The Senior Bowl game will take place at 1:30 p.m. ET Jan. 27.
PHILADELPHIA — Things were already going very well for the Philadelphia Eagles on this mild January night, but when the call came in — “FLEA FLICKER!” — from the sideline with 10 minutes, 13 seconds to go in the third quarter and the ball at the Minnesota 41-yard line, the huddle had to work to keep it together.
“I think you just try not to smile,” Eagles quarterback Nick Foles said a couple of hours later, long after he and his teammates had all stopped trying. “I don’t know if I’ve ever run a flea flicker, so it was my first time, so I just tried not to smile. Because anytime you’re a quarterback and you can do a little play like that, it’s pretty exciting, and sometimes they can go really bad.”
But nothing went bad for Foles or the Eagles in this one. This was a 38-7 thumping of the Minnesota Vikings that crowned Philadelphia the 2017 NFC champions and tacked another head-scratching chapter on to the odd story of Foles’ career. Coach and white-hot playcaller Doug Pederson sent in a flea flicker, the Eagles ran a flea flicker and Foles just dropped a dime of a 41-yard touchdown pass to a fairly well-covered Torrey Smith. The second of three touchdown passes on the night for Foles against the league’s No. 1 defense, just the way everybody thought it would go.
“I haven’t even had time to really comprehend what is going on, to be honest,” Foles said after the game. “I don’t know if I ever will. When I was up on that stage, that’s something you dream about as a kid.”
It’s Eagles vs. Patriots in the Super Bowl, and ESPN.com has you covered for the 2017 NFL playoffs.
There are so many places to go with the Nick Foles story, but let’s start there on that makeshift stage. A team wins the NFC Championship Game, and it hops up on a hastily assembled stage in the middle of the field to get the trophy and does interviews with Terry Bradshaw the whole stadium can hear. Pederson was up there with team owner Jeffrey Lurie and a handful of other players in their gray, NFC championship T-shirts and hats, filming it all with their phones.
Somebody in charge of staging those postgame festivities spotted Eagles backup quarterback Nate Sudfeld and started shouting, “Hey! You need to be up on that stage! Nick! You need to be up on that stage!” Sudfeld shook his head and informed the earnest individual — as he had informed fans screaming, “Nick!” at him during pregame warmups — that he was not Foles, and that Foles was already up there.
Foles got a kick out of the story when Sudfeld relayed it to him at the lockers a while later. He knows how crazy all of this is. He knows he wasn’t supposed to be here — that but for Carson Wentz tearing his ACL in a Week 14 game in Los Angeles, Foles would have spent this game with an earpiece in, watching from the sideline as Wentz went 26-for-33 for 352 yards and three touchdown passes.
Foles has the perspective to appreciate the texture of his career path. He probably had the greatest statistical season any Eagles quarterback has ever had — his 27-touchdown, two-interception season for the Chip Kelly-coached Eagles back in 2013. But a year after that, he was gone from Philly. He spent 2015 with the Rams, helping turn out the lights on the NFL in St. Louis. Later cut by the Rams in camp in 2016, he pondered retirement before former Eagles coach Andy Reid hired him as Alex Smith’s backup in Kansas City. Then he signed up with Pederson, another of his former Eagles coaches, to back up Wentz in Philly this year.
Thrust into the spotlight again after Wentz’s injury, Foles flung four touchdown passes in an encouraging Week 15 victory over the miserable Giants, but then he laid a huge egg in the regular-season finale against the Cowboys. The Eagles entered the playoffs as the NFC’s No. 1 seed, thanks mainly to the MVP-caliber work Wentz did before his injury, but as recently as 10 days ago, their fans were chewing their fingernails down to the nubs at the thought of Foles having to make one of those third-down pickups in a big spot in the playoffs.
“In sports, everything’s a process, and you can’t give up,” Foles said. “Everyone, when it’s a bad outing, wants to be really critical. But no one in the locker room doubted me.”
They really didn’t. Talking to the Eagles’ players in late December, you heard a lot about that 2013 season as proof that Foles could start and succeed in NFL games. The Eagles believed in their coaching staff and the depth of their impressive roster. Having lost left tackle Jason Peters, middle linebacker Jordan Hicks and running back Darren Sproles already to season-ending injuries, they convinced themselves they were strong enough to overcome the loss of Wentz, as well.
“Most teams, when they lose their starting quarterback, the season’s over,” center Jason Kelce said. “Not this team. It’s a credit to our front office for putting a guy back there who can get it done.”
Foles is what he is. The story of his career has been one of ultra-high highs and deep, deep lows. He’s as liable to play poorly in the Super Bowl as he is to repeat Sunday’s triumph. His volatility and his unpredictability are what make him a backup, and by this point, he and those around him have more or less made peace with that.
But right now? Right now, he’s not a backup. Right now, Nick Foles is a starting quarterback in Super Bowl LII against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. And in the wake of Sunday’s victory, he moved around like a man quite comfortable in that impossibly lofty spot.
After the stage, his next stop was the X-ray room, where his team wanted him to have his ribs checked out following a night of hard hits from the Vikings’ front. They checked out fine, and he strode back into the locker room in that gray T-shirt with his uniform pants and cleats still on. At this locker, a well-worn Bible sat on a top shelf with a white piece of paper marking a passage somewhere in the middle. (“I’d rather not share which one, but I appreciate you asking,” he said.) For a full minute, he sat in his chair alone with his head in his hands, quietly pondering it all. Then he got up and, in his low-key way, joined the party.
He laughed with Sudfield at the stories of people confusing the two. He posed for a photo with the children of general manager Howie Roseman. He accepted quiet handshakes and congratulations from teammates and locker-room personnel. After his shower, he sat for a while and talked with Wentz, who was walking with the help of a cane in his right hand and a heavy brace under his left pants leg. He slipped on a black T-shirt with green lettering and a message about Jesus, and over that he slipped that gray NFC-champions shirt again. A pair of clear-framed glasses and a cap that matched the shirt, and he was on his way to his news conference, where he talked openly about just how crazy this all is.
“Right now,” he said, “we’re headed to the Super Bowl, and it’s pretty unreal.”
Yeah, there’s no way Nick Foles woke up on Dec. 1, 2017,and imagined himself starting in the NFC Championship Game and then the Super Bowl. After the way he and the Eagles finished the season, it’s hard to believe any of the revelers who howled their way back up Broad Street from Lincoln Financial Field imagined it, either. But Foles isn’t one to bog down in all of that. He’s basically all about the work.
“You just have to keep working,” he said. “You’re not going to always have a great day. You should never get down. You should always learn from those experiences and look forward to working through them. Because that’s the beautiful thing, when you look back at the journey and you realize that it wasn’t always great. There were bumps in the road, but you were able to overcome them with the help of the people around you, the people that believe in you and love you. That’s a special thing, and that’s what’s so special about a moment like this, because you have an opportunity to reflect and be grateful.”
Sometimes, as the man said, you have to try not to smile.
