Tom Brady fans will love these NASCAR odds

Tampa can’t seem to stop winning championships in professional sports. Who is to say that this trend won’t carry over to NASCAR as well?

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series regular season came to an end this past Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway, and the playoffs are scheduled to get underway this Sunday night at Darlington Raceway.

Heading into the four-round, 10-race postseason, Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson is listed by WynnBET as the favorite to win the championship, coming off of a regular season that saw him win a series-high five races to secure the regular season title.

Larson, whose odds are listed at +260 (bet $100 to win $260 for a $360 payout), is set to enter the playoffs 28 points higher than any of the other 15 drivers in the playoff field. No other driver has odds shorter than +650.

Make your pick now on WynnBET.

So what does that have to do with Tom Brady?

Listed at +5000, which is tied for second worst among the 16 playoff drivers, is Stewart-Haas Racing’s Aric Almirola, a native of Tampa, Florida.

You want to talk trends?

Since Brady signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March 2020, the Tampa Bay Lightning have won back to back Stanley Cup championships, the Tampa Bay Rays competed in last year’s World Series as the American League champions and currently have the best record in the American league once again, and the Buccaneers are the reigning Super Bowl champions with a great chance to win it again this season.

More from NASCAR Cup Series

• NASCAR Cup Series: New team set to compete in 2024
• NASCAR: Surprising name continuously linked to new seat
• NASCAR driver at risk of missing the Daytona 500?
• NASCAR set for rare appearance last seen 13 years ago
• NASCAR team adds third car, names driver for 2024 Daytona 500

Yet the only driver who has worse odds than Almirola to win this year’s championship is Front Row Motorsports’ Michael McDowell, who is listed at +10000. And if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, McDowell really doesn’t even have that good of a chance to win the title.

He is here because he won the Daytona 500. His season is already a success for that reason, but it’s not going to be a total fairy tale. At best, maybe he advances to the round of 8 with an exceptional round of 16 and a win at Talladega Superspeedway in the round of 12. He’s not winning the championship.

Meanwhile, Almirola is in the playoffs for the fourth straight season after winning a non-superspeedway race for the first time in his career in July. So among the true contenders, he is effectively tied for last with Richard Childress Racing’s Tyler Reddick.

How do you pass up 50:1 odds on anything Tampa-related in professional sports at this point?

And we know that the driver of the #10 Ford is a big Brady/Buccaneers fan, given what he put Clint Bowyer through earlier this year after the Buccaneers beat Bowyer’s Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV…

While he finished the regular season in 23rd place in the point standings, the fact that he won at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a track where the 750-horsepower package is utilized, is huge considering the prominence of those tracks in the playoffs. Most notably, the round of 8 finale is contested at Martinsville Speedway, and the Championship 4 is contested at Phoenix Raceway.

Almirola nearly won at Phoenix Raceway in 2018, which would have advanced him to the Championship 4 since the track was then featured in the round of 8, and he finished in fifth place in the championship standings that season.