Action Before the NFL’s Free Agency Makes the Best International Series Team a Tough Pick

| National Football League (NFL) | 03/16/2022

On March 16, the NFL free agency opened up to mark the start of a new campaign. With the trading deadline being notoriously slow compared to the likes of the NHL and NBA, the free agency is where fans get to see the most player movement.

At one point, the 2022 free agency was set to feature stars like Von Miller, Odell Beckham Jr., Chandler Jones, Terron Armstead, and Bobby Wagner. Just before the market rings open, however, teams can secure pending free agents, with two teams penned in for International Series games making big moves in this window. As a result, it’s now tricky to tell which of the teams in the 2022 International Series is destined to go to the Super Bowl after a trip overseas.

Legendary Quarterbacks Battle in the Odds

In the NFL betting, before the free agents market fully opened, the Buffalo Bills were the favorite at +650 to win the Super Bowl. Just behind the Bills stood two International Series teams – Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Both teams led by future Hall of Fame quarterbacks sat at a strong +750.

The bookmaker providing these odds also hosts NFL tips for today from Mike Carlson, the NFL expert who called a Bengals +4 winning bet in the Super Bowl, so it’s clear that they both made the right moves prior to the open market. Easily the most important for them both was bringing back their QBs and an essential weapon.

As for the other International Series teams, the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints look to have several top players stripped away in the offseason to return as rather different units in the 2022 season. The Jacksonville Jaguars remain well away from any Super Bowl conversation. So, the Packers in London and Bucs in Munich look to be the best picks should you want to see the potential Super Bowl winner overseas this year.

Key Pre-market Signings to Secure the Contenders

Both the Packers and Buccaneers made tremendous moves before the market opened to secure two or more key offensive weapons. For the Bucs, that came in the form of bringing Tom Brady back from his brief retirement, keeping speedster Chris Godwin via the franchise tag, and keeping the best center on the market, Ryan Jensen, who underpinned the offensive line that some could argue as the NFL’s best last season.

Over in Green Bay, superstar Aaron Rodgers cut the speculation fairly early to sign a new four-year, $200 million extension with the Packers. It seems unlikely that he would have done this without reassurances that his top target, Davante Adams, would be retained, though. In the end, the Packers had to deploy the franchise tag, for 2022, but it guaranteed that the top components of Green Bay’s lethal offence remained in place.

This quick-acting groundwork is undoubtedly why the Packers and Buccaneers are second only to the Bills in the Super Bowl odds prior to the free agency opening. The NFL is a quarterbacks league these days, and in the Brady-Godwin and Rodgers-Adams duos on new deals, the Bucs and Packers will certainly be tipped by many to go all the w

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