AFC North Betting Preview - Division Winner Odds, Win Totals and Team Outlooks

Can you feel it? The 2023-24 NFL season is inching closer by the day. As of this writing, we are now just weeks away from kickoff between the Kansas City Chiefs and Detroit Lions on Thursday, September 7. We can’t wait to dive into betting on this season, from parlays and futures to TD round Robins and more, this year has potential to be our best yet.

Full-fledged preseason is here. This is where we’ll see who cracks the roster bubble, shaping the final outlook for each team and finalizing the player pools from which we’ll be drafting our fantasy squads. We even get to watch Aaron Rodgers and Co. on Hard Knocks this year, which is proving to be top-quality entertainment.

In order to fully prep for the wealth of betting opportunities we’ll have this season, we’ve analyzed each of the eight NFL divisions. Combining our cutting-edge predictive analytics model with our own know-how, we look at key offseason moves, the outlook for each team as predicted by DimersBOT and even some futures bets with value worth jumping on now.

MORE: Three Early NFL Futures Bets to Make Now

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NFL Divisional Previews

AFC East | AFC West | AFC South | AFC North

NFC East | NFC North | NFC West | NFC South

MORE: Week 1 Game-by-Game Predictions

AFC North Division Preview

Play this exact order of the AFC North standings for +600 on DraftKings!

Cincinnati Bengals

2022-23 Record: 12-4, lost in AFC Championship

2023 Win Total: O/U 10.5

Key Offseason Moves: Signed OT Orlando Brown. Lost S Jessie Bates III, S Vonn Bell, CB Eli Apple.

Outlook: After losing Super Bowl LVI to the Rams, the Bengals nearly made it back to the title game, before falling 20-23 to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship last season. The Bengals continue to set their sights high, as after three straight years in the basement of the AFC North, they’ve tallied back-to-back division titles. Can they make it three in a row?

DimersBOT thinks so as it calculates a 49.6% chance of Cincinnati securing the AFC North crown this year and at odds of +150, that’s one of the best edges for a favorite at 9%. This presents value on its own, though if you’re looking for some longer plus-money odds, we’ll touch on that in a few.

Joe Burrow went down with a calf strain earlier this summer and questions began to swirl around the Bengals' place in a division expected to be more competitive this year. Fortunately for all, Burrow appears as though he'll be ready for Week 1 if not shortly after, so we’ll be operating under the assumption that he will play most of the season for the Bengals.

The Bengals go from a competitive division to an equally competitive conference with the Chiefs, Bills, Chargers and Jaguars all expected to contend in the AFC. At +550 with a 17.6% probability to win the conference, we’re again getting some value, although here it’s at just about 2% +EV. We give Cincinnati a 9.6% chance to win it all giving us a slim edge in their +1100 odds.

Takeaway: This is going to be a competitive division. If the +150 for the Bengals to win doesn’t entice you off the bat, then we’d consider taking an exact order of the division. If you go based on our model’s probabilities, you’re getting +600. If you want to bet the Bengals to win the Super Bowl, it’s probably worth considering one of the exact results like Bengals to beat the Eagles (+4000), the 49ers (+6500) or any NFC team of your choosing.

Diving into their win totals markets, we see their line at 10.5 is juiced to the Over at -130. The most-likely win result for any team this entire season based on our model is the Bengals to finish with 11 wins and a 58% chance to go over 10.5 in any fashion. Exactly 11 wins will get you odds of +500, and the Bengals are +750 to have the most wins in the NFL, which is a significantly better price than similar results like Over 11.5 wins (+125) or Over 12.5 wins (+260).

If you’re more on the fade train for the Bengals, then rather than take their Under we’d take the Ravens to win the division or a Ravens-Bengals exact order, as 10 wins or less might not be enough to secure a third-straight division title.

MORE: Best Odds for Every NFL Game

Baltimore Ravens

2022 Record: 10-7, lost in WC Round

2023 Win Total: O/U 10.5

Key Offseason Moves: Signed WR Odell Beckham Jr, CB Rock Ya-Sin, CB Trayvon Mullen. Lost CB Marcus Peters, EDGE Justin Houston. Drafted WR Zay Flowers. Re-signed QB Lamar Jackson.

Outlook: A 10-7 season isn’t the usual result a team would be looking to bounce back from, but in Baltimore, the expectation is sustained playoff success and limping into the playoffs just to get bounced in the first round by the team that won your own division is not going to cut it. Lamar Jackson has played in just 12 games in each of the last two seasons and it’s directly correlated with the Ravens’ offesne taking a step backwards, to no real surprise. To get back to the top-10 offense they wielded back in 2019 and 2020, they’ll need to contend with a Browns team that *should* be better with Deshaun Watson available for a full season, and a Steelers team that’s looking to rise the ranks.

Our model projects Baltimore with a 25.2% chance to win the AFC North while their best odds to do so imply a 30% chance at +235. While +235 is a solid number for a talented team and second-favorite, you’d still want at least +300 with this probability. Unfortunately, these odds will only get better if the Ravens fall behind and at that point it might not be worth betting on. Plus, if you want to bet the Ravens to win, you can get AFC North exact order props for +900, +1200 and even longer depending on which order you go with, but investing in a couple of these is better than an outright Baltimore win.

At +1000 to win the AFC Championship, they’re a bit more fairly priced given DimersBOT’s 8% calculated probability. There’s not any particularly sharp value for their Super Bowl odds of +2000, but it’s at least aligned with our model’s own fair odds.

Takeaway: Looking beyond the division winner for some betting value, we see the line for their win total is +100 to go Over 10.5 wins. This is one of the bigger fades from DimersBOT, as we project them with a 64% chance to go under this number.

Almost half of that probability is on them finishing with 8 or 9 wins which you can bet at +750 or +600, respectively. For this same reason, we probably wouldn’t bet on them to win the division, as it’s likely going to take at least 11. The books are both expecting the Ravens to go under and struggle in a competitive conference as they are +150 to make the playoffs.

For that reason, we think Lamar Jackson’s MVP odds should be at least +2000, as +1500 is too short for a team with plus-money odds to reach the postseason.

RELATED: 2023 NFL Preseason Futures Odds

Cleveland Browns

2022 Record: 7-10, 2^nd place in NFC South

2023 Win Total: O/U 9.5

Key Offseason Moves: Signed DL Dalvin Tomlinson, S Juan Thornhill. Lost EDGE Jadeveon Clowney, RB Kareem Hunt. Traded for WR Elijah Moore.

Outlook: After acquiring Deshaun Watson in the previous offseason amidst his off the field legal battles, the Browns finally deployed him under center for their final six games last season. He certainly looked like a player who hadn’t played football in over a year, throwing for seven touchdowns and five interceptions with a 38.3 QBR. Cleveland won three of those games, scoring more than 20 points just twice.

The Browns haven’t won a division title since 1999 and our model doesn’t expect that to change this season. With just a 14% probabilty to win the division, their odds of +400 are insulting as they should be closer to +700 based on our model’s proejections. At just a 3.7% probability of winning the AFC, their odds of +2000 aren’t any better. They’re shortest odds for a division finish is +190 to come in last, with +220 to come in third.

Takeaway: Their win total is -135 to go Under 9.5, and our model agrees with the favored side, giving them just a 31% chance to go over the number, if just slightly with our most likely result being 9 wins at an 18% occurrence, which comes in at +500.

For an interesting longshot that correlates with the under, the Browns are +3500 to be the NFL’s last winless team. They open their season vs. CIN, PIT, TEN, BAL, SF and IND with a Week 5 bye. That means there’s a chance they’re 0-5 heading into a bye week, giving you a full week off from sweating your bet if it makes it that far. This just isn’t a very inspiring team to invest in.

RELATED: AFC East Division Preview

Pittsburgh Steelers

2022 Record: 9-8, 3^rd in AFC North

2023 Win Total: O/U 8.5

Key Offseason Moves: Signed: CB Patrick Peterson, S Keanu Neal, WR Allen Robinson. Lost: LB Devin Bush, S Terrell Edmunds, CB Cameron Sutton. Drafted: CB Joey Porter Jr., TE Darnell Washington

Outlook: The Steelers are full-steam ahead in their “rebuild” after Big Ben rode off into the sunset. They drafted their hopeful franchise QB in Kenny Pickett, young WR George Pickens and eyes on a new reign in the AFC North. It remains to be seen if Mike Tomlin is the “developing a young QB” type of coach but the franchise will likely give him a leash of a few seasons to see where he can take Kenny Pickett.

Last year was the first time since 2012 that the Steelers didn’t finish at least second in the division and DimersBOT projects it to happen again. Giving them just an 11.1% chance to win the division, their odds of +470 are nowhere near fair value which would be closer to +800.

Takeaway: Is this finally the year? Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season in the NFL. That's pretty phenomenal stuff, even if he squeaked by at 8-8 on three separate occasions, but that's no longer in the cards with the 17-game schedule introduced last season (barring a tie, of course). 

Maybe it's a little because of the Mike Tomlin narrative with the jury still out on Kenny Pickett, but the books are all about the Steelers this year, juicing their win total as high as -150 to the over, implying a 60% chance. DimersBOT couldn't disagree more, with the Steelers' most frequent result at 8 wins, and just a 46% chance of going Over, meaning their odds should be +115, not -150.

There truly aren’t many enticing markets for the Steelers this season as they’re likely to be right in the middle of the pack, meaning there’s little reason to bet them to be bad but they have some work to do before they’re good.

MORE: Week 1 Game-by-Game Predictions

Get a head start on your NFL wagers with our full slate of NFL tools, all powered by our cutting-edge predictive analytics models known as ‘DimersBOT!’ We run 1000s of simulations for every game all season long to help identify where the books are mispricing their odds, all to help you turn a profit.

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